JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

Gunfire came at us from both sides, still more or less blind and random, but no less lethal for that. Bullets are the damnedest things, going by. They aren’t dramatic. By themselves they sound almost like big bugs, like something that might buzz by you real fast out in the country on a hot, muggy summer afternoon. It’s almost hard to feel afraid of them, until it truly hits you exactly what they are. It’s kind of handy, actually, that moment of disconnection between the time your senses tell you that death is flicking around randomly a couple of feet away, and the time your mind manages to make you understand that moving around in it is an awful idea. It gives you time to act before you get so scared that you just find a shady spot and stay there.

“Go, go, go!” I called, still charging forward. Our only chance was to keep moving ahead, to rattle Nicodemus and company into jumping out of the way, and to get into the only shelter on that hilltop.

“Kill them!” Nicodemus roared, his voice furious, and then there was the sound of rushing wind from overhead. He must have taken to the sky, flying upon that shadow of his as if upon enormous bat wings.

More of the beasts had closed on Michael, and both Swords were at work again, striking out, silver light gleaming more brightly now from their blades. Sanya let out a shout, and more light flooded the hilltop, casting my own shadow out darker in front of me as Esperacchius joined the battle, and more of the beasts’ cries of pain shook the air.

In front of me Thorned Namshiel howled out in frustration and evident terror in some tongue I didn’t know, and I saw that both Tessa and Hellmaid Rosanna had pulled a vanishing act. Namshiel, his arm outstretched in the general direction of the far side of the stone throne, added, despair in his voice, “Come back!”

Then he turned toward me as he heard my feet churning through the wet snow. He still held a corona of green lightning in his spiny hand, and as his eyes focused on my general location he bared his teeth in a snarl of bitter hatred and flung out his hand, hurling a sphere of crackling emerald electricity at me.

My shield bracelet was ready to go, and I had terror and rage and determination in plenty to empower my defenses. I deflected the sphere at an angle and sent it rebounding harmlessly up into the sky.

“Amateur puppy,” Namshiel snarled, and began to gather more sickly green power at his fingertips. He made an odd little gesture and flicked his fingers, and suddenly five tiny threads of green light leapt toward me on five separate, spiraling paths.

I brought my shield around to intersect the new attack-and realized at the last second that each individual thread of energy was coming at me on a slightly different wavelength of the spectrum of magical energy, a variance of frequencies that my shield couldn’t stretch to cover. Not all at the same time, anyway. I countered three of them and nearly got the fourth, but it slipped by me, and I never even touched the fifth strand.

Something that felt like cold, greasy piano wire wrapped around my throat, and I couldn’t breathe.

“Insufferable, arrogant little monkey,” Namshiel hissed. “Playing with the fires of creation. Binding your soul to it, as if you were one of us . How dare you so presume. How dare you wield soulfire against me . I, who was there when your pathetic kind was hewn from the muck.”

It wasn’t so much being strangled to death that I objected to, or even the megalomaniacal monologue I was being subjected to in the process. I just wished that I knew what the hell he was talking about. Granted, I had busted him up pretty good with that silver hand thing, but he was taking it so freaking personally .

I lost track of what I’d been thinking. My head hurt. So did my neck. Thorned Namshiel was ranting about something. Practically foaming at the mouth, really-right up until Amoracchius flashed in a line of silver fire, and Thorned Namshiel’s head hopped up off his shoulders, tumbled twice, and fell into the snow.

Suddenly I took a deep breath and the world started sorting itself out again.

Michael stepped forward, took one look at Namshiel’s body, and hewed the right hand off at the wrist. He picked up the hand and dropped it into a pouch on his sword belt. Meanwhile, Sanya shouldered his rifle and dragged me to my feet.

“Go,” I choked out, barely able to get the words out through my half-crushed throat. I regained my own feet and waved Sanya off me, gesturing ahead. “The lighthouse. Fast.”

Sanya looked from me to the hollow tower and promptly sheathed his Sword to take up his rifle again. The big Russian advanced on the tower, the Kalashnikov at his shoulder, and began putting precise shots through the heads of each of the beasts that had been chained to the walls inside to torment Ivy, who still floated bound within the greater circle.

I followed Sanya as quickly as I could, wheezing in breaths through my aching neck. By the time Michael and I had gotten into the shelter of the mostly closed ring of the tower’s stones, the gunfire from around us had begun to close in on us again as the gunmen’s night vision returned. The tiny window of opportunity the flash of the Fireball rounds had created had waned.

“How did you know?” Michael asked, panting. “How did you know they would break if we charged them?”

“You don’t survive two thousand years in a game like this one without predator reflexes,” I replied. “Any predator in the world reacts the same way to a loud noise, a bright flash, and a noisy and unexpected charge. They get the hell out of the way. Can’t really help themselves. Habit of a couple millennia is a bitch to break.”

Sanya calmly shot another beast.

I shrugged. “Nicodemus and company thought that they knew how things were going to proceed, and when they didn’t go the way they expected, they got flustered. So the Nickelheads got clear.” I pursed my lips. “Of course, they’re going to be back in a minute. And very upset. Hey, there, Marcone.”

“Dresden,” Marcone said, as if we’d passed each other outside the coffee shop. He sounded a little tired, but calm. All things considered, that was probably an indicator of exactly how much moxie the crime lord had. “Can you help the child?”

Dammit. That’s the thing I hate most about Marcone. Every once in a while he says or does something that makes it difficult to label him “scum, criminal” and file him neatly away in a drawer somewhere. I glared at him. He returned the glare with a faint, knowing smile. I muttered under my breath and turned to study the elaborate circle, while Sanya finished the last of the beasts.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Michael said quietly, staring.

I didn’t blame him. Even among professionals this circle was impressive. Lots of luminous, glowing lines and swirls involved, and that always looks fantastic, especially at night. The gold and silver and precious stones didn’t hurt things, either. The light and music show being put on by the chimes and crystals added a wonderful little eerie edge to it all, especially given the grotesque art that framed the interior magical symbology. “This is some upper-tier stuff,” I said quietly. “It will be another century, maybe two, before I’m good enough to come close to this level of work. It’s delicate. One single thing a fraction of an inch out of place and the whole thing goes kablooie. It’s powerful. When you’re putting this together, if any one of a couple of dozen of the power flows slips for even an instant, the whole thing goes out of balance and could go up with enough force to blow the top off of this whole hillside. It took a freaking genius to put this together, Michael.”