Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,70

stone of the wall faded into nonexistence, revealing a hallway maybe fifty feet across. I got back up onto my shaky legs again to take a look. The tunnel sloped down gently, and was lit by the wan glow of the crystals.

Lots of crystals.

Lots and lots and lots of crystals.

The tunnel stretched into the distance. Maybe it was a mile long. Maybe two. Maybe it ran all the way down to Hell. Mounds of crystals dotted the tunnel at regular intervals. Some of them were the size of buildings. Some of the individual crystals had to be the size of freaking trees. I had barely gotten my gawk on when a flood of energy smashed into me, as though opening the door had released liquid held back under pressure. The energy had no physical presence—but I felt a nauseating wave of greasy cold flooding through me, the dark power of the ley lines that converged upon the island breathing across me like a cloud of invisible smog.

“THE WELL,” Demonreach said. The spirit turned, slowly, and eleven more doorways to tunnels almost identical to the first one sighed into existence. Eleven more of them. Because one infinite tunnel full of horrors obviously wasn’t enough. I had twelve.

The dark energy from them hissed and oozed through the air, as if sheer malice and vicious will had been distilled into an unseen mist.

“And . . . and everything down there makes a naagloshii look like small change?” I asked.

“CORRECT.”

“Of course. Naturally,” I said, staring down the first hall. “What are they? What’s down there?”

“NIGHTMARES. DARK GODS. NAMELESS THINGS. IMMORTALS.”

“Holy crap,” I whispered. And that was when I understood why the place was called the Well. “This is why the island is the source of all those ley lines. It’s like a great big bubbling geyser of bad.”

Bob let out an awed whistle. “Uh. Wow, boss, yeah. That’s exactly it. The energy in those ley lines . . . it’s the body heat these things give off.”

I felt a giggle coming up. “Man. Containment. Hell’s bells, containment.” I tried to stuff the giggles back down and addressed Demonreach. “This isn’t a magical stronghold,” I said. “It’s a prison. It’s a prison so hard that half a dozen freaking naagloshii are in minimum security.”

“CORRECT,” Demonreach answered, “WARDEN.”

Chapter

Seventeen

“I don’t guess this job pays anything, does it?” I asked.

The spirit just regarded me.

“Didn’t think so,” I said. “So . . . when you call me Warden, you’re speaking literally.”

“INDEED.”

“And you are what? The guard?”

“THE GUARD. THE WALLS. THE BARS. I AM ORDER.”

“You are not the first law-person I would want to be involved with,” I said. I raked my fingers back through my hair. “Okay,” I said, wincing. “The things in here. Are they dangerous where they are?”

“THEY ARE ALWAYS DANGEROUS. BUT THEY HAVE THE LEAST OPPORTUNITY TO EXPRESS IT HERE.”

I blinked. Those were some of the longest, most nuanced, and most complex sentiments the spirit had expressed to me. Which meant that we were speaking about something important—which only made sense. Demonreach didn’t care about friends or enemies or the price of tea in China. It cared about its inmates, period. Anything else, everything else, would be judged based upon its relevance to that subject.

“But can they get loose?”

“NOT WITHOUT OUTSIDE INTERVENTION,” Demonreach said, “OR YOUR AUTHORIZATION.”

“Meep,” I breathed. “Uh. You mean I could turn these things loose?”

“YOU ARE THE WARDEN.”

I swallowed. “Is it possible for me to communicate with them?”

“YOU ARE THE WARDEN.”

“Oh, Hell’s bells, this is bad.”

I had just inherited myself a world of trouble.

Having experienced a naagloshii up close and personal, there wasn’t any way I was letting one of those hideous things loose. I doubted I was going to like anything else that was being held prisoner here any better. In fact, I had no intention, for the time being, of even looking at them, much less finding out who and what the inmates were—and forget about actually talking to them. Not going to happen. Things that old and powerful could be deadly with only a few carefully chosen words dropped at the right place—and I’d learned that one the hard way, too.

But none of that really mattered.

I’d just been handed what amounted to a great big ugly weapon of mass destruction and potential havoc. To the various powers of the supernatural world, it wouldn’t matter that I would never use it. All that would matter was that I had it to use. Really, Officer, I know that’s a rocket launcher in