Jim Butcher - Cold Days

You never know what you have until it’s gone.

Peace and quiet and people I love. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Ah, hell.

The Outsider probably wasn’t good for it anyway. And I did have one more option.

I had been warned not to use the power of the Well. But . . .

What else did I have?

I might have done something extra stupid at that moment if the air hadn’t suddenly filled with a massive sound. Two loud, horrible crunching sounds, followed by a single, short, sharp clap of thunder. It repeated the sequence, again and again. Crunch, crunch, crack. Crunch, crunch, crack.

No, wait. I knew this song.

It was more like: stomp, stomp, clap . Stomp, stomp, clap .

What else did I have?

I had friends .

I looked up at Sharkface, who was scanning the lake’s surface, an odd expression twisting his unsettling face.

I smiled widely and said, “You didn’t see this coming, didja?”

STOMP, STOMP, CLAP!

STOMP, STOMP, CLAP!

This was somebody’s mix version of the song, because it went straight to the chorus of voices, pure, human voices, loud enough to shake the ground—and I lifted my arms and sang along with them.

“Singin’ we will, we will rock you!”

The Halloween sky exploded with strobes of scarlet and blue light, laser streaks of white and viridian flickering everywhere, forming random, flickering impressions of objects and faces, filling the sky with light that pulsed in time with the music.

And as it did, the Water Beetle , the entire goddamned ship , exploded out from under a veil that had rendered it and the water it had displaced and every noise it had made undetectable not only to me, but to a small army of otherworldly monstrosities and their big, bad Walker general, too.

The Walker let out another furious shriek, his hideous features twisted even more by the frenetic explosion of light in the sky, and that was all he had time to do—the Water Beetle slammed into the last barge at full speed.

The mass differential between the two ships was significant—but this was different from when the barge had hit my iceberg. For one thing, it was almost entirely still, having only barely begun to pick up speed again. For another, the Water Beetle didn’t hit it head-on. Instead, it struck the barge from the side, and right up by its nose. With less than ten yards to spare before the barge’s prow ground up onto Demonreach’s shore, the Water Beetle brutally slammed her nose away from contacting the power of the outgoing ley line.

I couldn’t hear the collision over the thunder of Queen’s greatest hit, but it flung objects all over both ships around with the impact—more so on the Beetle than on the barge. The barge wallowed, stunned, its nose turned away from the beach, its long side being presented to the island, while the Water Beetle rebounded violently, drunkenly, and crunched up onto her hull in the shallows, listing badly to one side.

Mac and Molly were up at the wheel. She had nearly been thrown from the craft, but Mac had grabbed my apprentice around the waist and kept her from getting a flying lesson. I’m not sure she even noticed. Her face was contorted in a concentration so deep, it was practically dementia, her lips moving frantically, and she held a wand in either hand, moving them in entirely disconnected movements, as if directing two different orchestras through two different speed-metal medleys.

And as I watched, two other forms bounded up onto the Water Beetle ’s rail, then into graceful leaps that carried them over onto the barge—directly into the center of the ritual that was still running at a frantic pitch.

Thomas had gone into the fight with his favorite combination of weapons—a sword and a pistol. Even as I watched, my brother whirled into a mass of figures on the deck, blade spinning, blood flying out in wide, clean arcs. He moved so swiftly that I could barely track him, just a blur of steel here, a flash of cold grey eyes there. His gun fired in quick rhythm between strokes of his falcata, scything down the Outsiders’ mortal henchmen like sheaves of wheat.

The second figure was grey and shaggy and terrifying. Mouse’s lionlike ruff of fur flew out like a true mane as he whirled and lunged into the ritual’s participants wherever Thomas hadn’t. I saw him rip a shotgun from the hands of a stunned guard and fling it with a snap of his head into another one before bounding forward and bringing half a dozen panicked men to the deck under his weight—and smashing them through the circle that had surrounded the ritual.

The reduced energy the ritual had been able to use, the framework that the ley line would have turned into a deadly construction, vanished, released into the night sky to be shaken to pieces by the music. We will, we will, rock you .

“Hey, Sharkface!” I shouted, stepping forward, gathering Winter and soulfire as I went.

The furious Walker whirled back to me just in time to have the heavy, octagonal barrel of the Winchester slam through the ridge of bone that he had instead of front teeth, and drive all the way to the back of his mouth.

“Get rocked,” I said, and pulled the trigger.

Along with the .45-caliber bullet, I sent a column of pure energy and will surging down the barrel and into the Walker’s skull. His head exploded, literally exploded, into streamers and gobbets of black ichor. His cloak of rags went mad, throwing the headless body into the air and sending it thrashing through the shallow water like a half-squashed bug. Dark vapor began issuing from the frantically twitching body—then suddenly gathered into a single cloud, all in a rush, and shot away, emitting a furious and agonized and terrorized scream as it went, alien but unmistakable.

Then the body went limp in the water. The cloak continued flopping and thrashing for a few seconds before it, too, went still.

A unified howl of dismay rose from the surface of the lake, from the Outsiders, and V-shaped wakes appeared on the surface, retreating from the island in every direction, chased by flickering spears of light and music—and the horns of the Hunt began to blare in a frenzy, ringing up from the water’s quivering surface. I saw a massive black-and-white form seize a fleeing Outsider and roll, while a shadow-masked rider lashed out over and over with a long spear. In another place, a shark exploded from the waves, hanging against the sky for a second, jaws gaping, before plunging down directly atop another Outsider, driving it beneath the waves where a dozen wickedly sharp fins abruptly converged.

The woods stirred behind me and Murphy came panting out of them, her P90 hanging from its sling. She came to my side, staring at the chaos.

I couldn’t blame her. It was horrible. It was unique. It was glorious. It was . . .

Suddenly it felt like my heart had stopped.

It was distracting.

“Molly!” I screamed. “Molly!”

Mac heard me through that mess, and shook Molly. When she didn’t react, he grimaced and then delivered a short, sharp smack to her cheek.

She gasped and blinked her eyes, and the sky show and sound track abruptly vanished, right in the middle of the guitar solo.

“Get them out of the water!” I screamed. “Get onto the shore! Hurry!”

Molly blinked at me several times. Then she seemed to get it and nodded her head quickly. She and Mac hurried down to the Beetle ’s slanted deck, to the door to below. She called out and Sarissa and Justine appeared, both looking terrified. Molly pointed them at the island, and the three jumped from the ship to the waist-deep water and started wading ashore.

Mouse caught what was happening and let out a short, sharp bark. Mouse doesn’t bark often, but when he does he can make bits of spackle fall from the ceiling. He and Thomas plunged from the bloodied deck of the barge into the water, and began swimming swiftly toward the island.