Jim Butcher - Cold Days

The cloud of hostile fae was still swirling and wobbling around. They obviously lacked any kind of leadership, and were still disordered by the gale-force winds with which I’d hit them—but I was almost out of energy, and about two seconds after they got their act together, I was a dead man.

“Feets don’t fail me now,” I muttered.

I kept the leaf blower on Hook, who I suspected was their leader, and strode forward, toward the car. I checked it with several quick glances. The gasoline smell wasn’t coming from the Caddy, but from a half-smashed car that had been close to the exploding duffel bag.

I gave the leaf blower one last surge of power and lunged into the Caddy, slamming the door behind me. I dumped Toot down next to Bob as gently as I could.

“What’s happening?” Bob shouted blearily from where he’d landed, sideways, in the well of the passenger seat.

“I’m getting my ass kicked by tiny faeries!” I shouted back, fumbling to start the car. “They’ve got my freaking number!”

There was a loud pop, and a slender miniature steel dagger slammed through the passenger window, transforming it into a broken webwork, as difficult to see through as a stained-glass window.

“Ack!” I said.

Bob started laughing hysterically.

The dagger vanished and then the same thing happened on the driver’s side.

Holy crap, Hook was way too bright for someone the size of a Tickle Me Elmo. He was blinding me.

I got the Caddy into reverse and rumbled back off the sidewalk onto the street, shedding bricks and debris as I went. Just as I bounced down onto the street proper, the front windshield exploded into a web of cracks, too, so I just kept driving backward, turning to look over my shoulder. That went well for a few seconds, and then the rear window broke, too.

I gritted my teeth. Under normal circumstances, the next move would be to roll down the window and stick my head out of it. Tonight, I was pretty sure I’d get a miniature dagger in the eye if I tried.

Sometimes you have to choose between doing something stupid and doing something suicidal. So I kept driving blind and backward through the middle of Chicago while Bob chortled his bony ass off.

“Tiny faeries!” He giggled, rolling a bit as the Caddy weaved and jounced. “Tiny faeries!”

My plan worked for about ten seconds—and then I slammed into a parked car. I was lucky that it wasn’t a large one. I mean, I couldn’t see it, but it bounced off the Caddy like a billiard ball struck by the cue ball. It also knocked the wheel out of my hands, wrenching it from my fingers and sending the Caddy onto another sidewalk. It smashed through a metal railing and then the back tires bounced down into a sunken stairwell.

I struggled to get the Caddy clear, but there was nothing for the tires to grab onto.

End of the line.

I let out a heartfelt curse and slammed a fist against the steering wheel. Then I made myself close my eyes and think. Think, think, don’t react in panic. Keep your head, Dresden.

“Major General,” I said. “You okay?”

“It’s not bad, my lord.” He gasped. “I’ve had worse.”

“We’ve got to move,” I said.

“Run away!” Bob giggled. “Run away! Tiny faeries!”

I growled in frustration and popped the Redcap’s hat down over Bob. “Stop being a jerk. This is serious.”

Bob’s voice was only barely muffled. It sounded like he couldn’t breathe. “Serious! Tiny! Faeries! The m-m-mighty wizard Dresden!”

“You are not as funny as you think you are,” I said severely. “Toot, you got any ideas?”

“Trap them all in a circle?” Toot suggested.

I sighed. Right. I’d just need to get them all to land in the same place at the same time, inside of a magic circle I had no means to create.

Toot’s a great little guy. Just . . . not really adviser material.

Orange light began to bathe the broken windows, highlighting the webwork of cracks in them. A lot of orange light.

“Crap,” I gasped. “I am not going to be known as the wizard who used his death curse thanks to a bunch of bitty nail guns.”

Then there was a very sinister sound.

Toward the rear of the Caddy, someone opened the lid to the fuel tank.

It wasn’t hard to work out what would happen next. Fire.

“Hell, no,” I said. I recovered the ball cap, turned a still-giggling Bob upside down, and then popped Toot into the skull. He sprawled in it, arms and legs sticking out, but he didn’t complain.

“Hey!” Bob protested.

“Serves you right, Giggles,” I snapped. I tucked the skull under my arm like a football.

I knew I didn’t have much of a chance of getting away from that swarm of fae piranha, but it was an infinitely larger chance than I would have if I stayed in the car and burned to death. Hell’s bells, what I wouldn’t give to have my shield bracelet. Or my old staff. I didn’t even have an umbrella.

I wasn’t sure how much more magic I had left in me, but I readied my shield spell, shaping it to surround me as I ran. I wouldn’t be able to hold it in place for long—but maybe if I got very, very lucky, I would survive the swarm long enough to find another option.

I took several sharp and completely not-panicked breaths, then piled out of the Cadillac, bringing my shield up with a shout of “Defendarius!”

The Little Folk started hitting my shield almost instantly. I once rode out a hailstorm in a dome-shaped Quonset hut made of corrugated steel. It sounded like that, only closer and a hell of a lot more lethal.

I went into a sprint. Between the still-present dust, the shroud of mist my leaf-blower spell had billowed forth, and the swarm of hostile fae, I could barely see. I picked a direction and ran. Ten steps. Twenty steps. The enemy continued pounding against the shield, and as I kept pouring my will into it to keep it in place, my body began to feel heavier and heavier.

Thirty steps—and I stepped into a small pothole in the sidewalk, stumbled, and fell.

Falling in a fight is generally bad. You tend not to get up again. I mean, there’s a reason that the phrase “He fell” was synonymous with death for a bunch of centuries.

I fell.

And then I heard the most beautiful sound of my life. Somewhere nearby, a cat let out an angry, hissing scream.

The Little Folk live in mortal dread of Felis domesticus . Cats are observant, curious, and fast enough to catch the little fae. Hell, the domestic cat can stalk, kill, and subsist upon more species than any other land predator in the world. They are peerless hunters and the Little Folk know it.

The effect of the scream was instantaneous. My attackers recoiled on pure reflex, immediately darting about twenty feet into the air—even Hook. I got a chance to look up and saw a large brindle tomcat leap from the top of a trash can onto the sidewalk beside me.

“No!” shouted Hook from inside his helmet. “Slay the beast! Slay them all!”

“What? What did I ever do to you ?” Bob protested, indignant. “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

The fae all looked at Hook and seemed to begin gathering their courage again.

A second cat screamed nearby. And a third. And a fourth. Cats started prowling out of alleys and from beneath parked cars. Cats began pacing along building ledges twenty feet from the ground. Glowing eyes reflected light from the deep shadows between buildings.

Even Hook wasn’t willing to put up with that action, I guess. The little fae champion let out a frustrated scream, then turned and darted up, up, and away, vanishing into the night. The others followed Hook, flowing away in a ribbon of emberlight.

I lay there for a second, exhausted and panting. Then I sat up and looked around.