Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,172

to get it done. The rider swerved in at us and I shot again—and missed as his steed juked and abruptly changed speed, briefly falling back before boring in again.

I repeated that cycle three times before I realized that the rider was playing me for a sucker. He respected the gun, but knew its weakness: me. He wasn’t dodging bullets—he was dodging me, tempting me into taking shots with little chance of success in an effort to get me to use up my ammo.

And all the while, the rest of the Hunt kept pace with us: dozens of riders like this one, plus maybe twice that many shadowy hounds, all keeping about fifty yards back and up, clearly giving the first two hunters the honor of first attempt.

“His horse!” Karrin screamed. “Shoot the horse!”

I ground my teeth. I didn’t want to do that. For all I knew, that thing was only a horse costume—there could be another human being underneath that shadowy outer shell.

The rider screeched again, the sound weirdly familiar and completely hair-raising. Again and again he came in on us, and I kept holding him off as we raced at insane speed through the rainy night, trading bullets for time.

“There!” I shouted suddenly, pointing off to our left. “Over there! The walls!”

We had reached the old steelwork grounds.

Karrin gunned the engine and swept the Harley out onto the open ground, racing frantically toward one of the only structures remaining—a trio of concrete walls maybe thirty or forty feet high, running parallel to one another for at least a quarter of mile—the last remains of U.S. Steel.

As the steed’s hooves started hitting the ground, they abruptly threw off clouds of angry silver sparks with every strike. The dark horse screeched in agony and I let out a howl of defiance—after a century of labor in the steel mills, there had to be unreal levels of trace steel and iron in the ground where they had stood—and whatever power sustained the Wild Hunt didn’t like it any more than the other beings of Faerie did.

“Between the walls!” I shouted. “Go, go, go!”

“That’s crazy!” Karrin shouted.

“I know!”

She guided the Harley around a pile of rubble and raced into the heavy shadows between two of the walls, and the rider was right on us as she did.

“Closer!” I screamed. “Force him to the wall!”

“Why!”

A quarter of a mile goes by fast on a roaring Harley—and the only thing in front of us was the cold water of Lake Michigan. “Hurry!” I shrieked.

“Agh!” Karrin howled, and abruptly the Harley slowed and cut right.

In an instant, we were even with the rider, and though no expression could show through the darkness surrounding his face, his body language was one of shock.

Now for the dangerous part, I thought. Which made me start giggling. Now it was getting dangerous.

Before the rider could change speed or take on altitude, and while the Harley was still leaning toward the rider, I hauled my left foot up onto the seat and sprang at him, still holding the now-emptied Winchester in one hand.

I slammed into the rider, but whoever he was, he was strong. I had the power of the Winter Knight at my disposal, but compared to the rider, my strength was that of a child. He threw a stiff-arm into my chest and nearly sent me tumbling—but I grabbed onto his sleeve, and as he fell I simply hung on. That changed things. It wasn’t an issue of strength against strength. This made it a contest of mass and leverage versus muscle, and muscle lost. I dragged the rider from his saddle and we both hit the rough ground at speed.

My hand was torn from his arm on impact, and I remember trying to shield my head with my arms. The Winchester flew clear of me, too. I could see the rider tumbling as well, silver fire blowing up from the shadowy mask around him. I stopped tumbling yards later, and frantically staggered back to my feet. I spotted the Winchester lying a few yards away and leapt for it.

I grabbed the weapon, but before I could load it, I heard a footstep behind me and I spun, raising the gun up over my head, parallel to the ground. It was in the nick of time. I felt the staggering power of an enormous blow, and a sword rang against the steel of the Winchester’s octagonal barrel.

Kringle recovered from the block swiftly. Scraps of shadow mask hung from