Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,124

do when you’re the size of a building relative to the person over whom you are standing. “Now just take it easy and we will—”

I’d opened the door maybe six inches when Captain Hook all but vanished in a blur of speed. I swiped an arm at him about a second and a half too late, but I didn’t feel too bad about missing, because Thomas tried to snatch the little maniac, too, and missed completely.

Hook, who worked for our enemies, and who had been right there in the kitchen the whole time we’d been scheming, shot toward a vent on one wall, crossing the room in the blink of an eye, and none of us could react in time to stop him.

Chapter

Twenty-nine

None of us but the major general.

Toot dropped down from where he’d been crouched atop a bookcase, intercepting Hook’s darting black form, and tackled the other little faerie to the floor in the middle of the living room. They landed with a thump on the carpeting, wings still blurring in fits and starts, and tumbled around the floor in irregular bursts and hops, sometimes rolling a few inches, sometimes bounding up and coming down six feet away.

Toot had planned for this fight. He’d tackled Hook into the carpet, where the hooks on his armor would get tangled and bind him, slowing him down. Furthermore, Toot’s hands were wrapped in cloth until it looked like he was wearing mittens or boxing gloves, and he managed to seize Hook by the hooks on the back of his armor. He swung the other little faerie around in a circle and then with a high-pitched shout flung him into the wall.

Captain Hook slammed into the wall, putting gouges in the freshly painted drywall, then staggered back and fell to the ground. Toot bore down with a vengeance, drawing his little sword, and the armored figure held up a mailed fist. “Invocation!” he piped in a high, clear voice. “I am a prisoner! I invoke Winter Law!”

Toot’s sword was already in midswing, but at those last two words he checked himself abruptly, pulling the weapon back. He hovered there over Hook with his feet an inch off the ground, gritting his teeth, but then he buzzed back from Hook and sheathed the sword.

“Uh,” I said. “Toot? What just happened?”

Toot-toot landed on the kitchen counter next to me and stomped around in a circle, clearly furious. “You opened your big fat mouth!” he screamed. After a moment, he added, sullenly, “My lord.”

I frowned at Toot and then at Hook. The enemy sprite just sat there on the floor, making no further effort to escape. “Okay,” I said. “Explain that.”

“You offered to take him prisoner,” Toot said. “By Winter Law, if he accepts your offer he may not attempt escape or offer any further resistance to you for as long as you see to his needs. Now you can’t kill him or beat him up or anything! And I was winning!”

I blinked. “Yeah, okay, fine. So let’s make with the questions already.”

“You can’t!” Toot wailed. “You can’t try to make him betray his previous covenants or terror-gate him or anything!”

I frowned. “Wait. He’s a guest?”

“Yes!”

“By Winter Law?” I asked.

“Yes! Sort of.”

“Well,” I said, starting toward Hook. “I never signed on to that treaty. So screw Winter Law—”

And abruptly, as if someone had just slammed a row of staples into my skin, the mantle of the Winter Knight vanished completely. Pain soared back into my body, inflamed tissue crying out, my bruises throbbing, the edemas beneath my skin pounding with a horrible tightness. Fatigue hit me like a truck. The sensations were so intense, the only way I could tell that I had fallen to the floor was by looking.

And my body abruptly went numb and useless from my stomach down.

That scared the hell out of me and confirmed one of my worst fears. When I’d consented to serve Mab, my back had been broken, my spine damaged. Taking up the mantle had covered what would probably have been a crippling and long-term injury. But without it, my body was only mortal. Better than most at recovering over time, but still human. Without the mantle, I wouldn’t have legs, bladder or bowel control, or, most important, independence.

I was on the ground like that for a subjective week, but it could have been only a few seconds before Thomas reached my side, with Murphy, Butters, and Molly right behind him. I knew they were there because I