She made whimpering sounds of protest, but she wasn’t really conscious. I picked her up and held her close to me, getting as much of my own coat around her as I could.
I looked up and found Marcone watching me steadily. Sanya had cut him free from the wall and evidently given the crime lord the cloak off his back. Marcone now hunched against the sleet in the white cloak, holding one of the chemical warming packs between his hands. He stood just a bit over average height and was of medium build, so Sanya’s cloak covered him like a blanket. “Will she be all right?” Marcone asked.
“She will,” I said with determination. “She damned well will.”
“Down!” barked Sanya.
Bullets raised sparks off the inside of the lighthouse and rattled wildly around its interior. Everyone got down. I made sure I had my body and my duster between Ivy and any incoming rounds. Sanya leaned out for a second and squeezed off a couple of shots, then hurriedly got back under cover again. The volume of fire from the outside grew.
“They’re bringing up reinforcements from down the hill,” Sanya reported. “Heavier weapons, too.”
Marcone glanced around the featureless interior of the ruined lighthouse. “If any of them have grenades, this is going to be a relatively brief rescue operation.”
Sanya leaned out and snapped off another pair of shots, barely getting back before return fire started chewing at the stone where he’d been. He muttered under his breath and changed magazines on his rifle.
The enemy gunfire suddenly ceased. There was silence on the hilltop for twenty or thirty seconds. Then Nicodemus’s voice, filled with anger, came through the air. “Dresden!”
“What?” I called back.
“I’m going to give you one chance to survive this. Give me the girl. Give me the coins. Give me the sword. Do that, and I’ll let you walk away alive.”
“Hah!” I said. It was possible that I didn’t feel quite as confident as I sounded. “Or maybe I’ll just leave from here.”
“Cross into the Nevernever from where you’re standing?” Nicodemus asked. “You’d be better off asking the Russian to put a bullet through your head for you. I know what lives on the other side.”
Given that they’d chosen this location for the greater circle precisely because it was a source of intense dark energy, I had no trouble believing that it connected to some nasty portions of the Nevernever. There was every chance that Nicodemus was not bluffing.
“How do I know that you won’t kill me the minute you get what you want?” I called back.
“Harry!” Michael hissed.
I shushed him.
“We both know what my word is worth,” Nicodemus said, his voice dry. “Really, Dresden. If we can’t trust each other, what’s the point in talking at all?”
Heh. Gaining enough time to await the second half of what those Fireballs were supposed to accomplish, that’s what.
The twin two-hundred-fifty-foot jets of fire had briefly blinded our enemies, true.
But they’d done something else, too.
Marcone tilted his head to one side for a moment and then murmured, “Does anyone else hear…strings?”
“Ah,” I said, and pumped my fist in the air. “Ah-hahahah! Have you ever heard anything so magnificently pompous and overblown in your life?”
Deep, ringing French horns joined the string sections, echoing over the hilltop.
“What is that?” Sanya murmured.
“That,” I crowed, “is Wagner, baby!”
Never let it be said that a Chooser of the Slain can’t make an entrance.
Miss Gard brought the reconditioned Huey up from the eastern side of the island, flying about a quarter of an inch over the treetops, blasting “The Ride of the Valkyries” from loudspeakers mounted on the chopper’s underside. Wind, sleet, and all, still she flew flawlessly through the night, having used the twin jets of the Fireball rounds, visible for miles over the pitch-black lake, to orient herself as to where to arrive. The Huey turned broadside as it rose over the hilltop, music blaring loud enough to shake snow from the treetops. The side door of the chopper was open, revealing Mister Hendricks manning a rotating-barreled minigun fixed to the deck of the helicopter—completely illegally, of course.
But then, I suppose that’s really one major advantage to working with criminals. They just don’t care about that sort of thing.
The barrels began to spin, and a tongue of flame licked out from the front of the gun. Snow and earth erupted into the air in a long trench in front of the cannon. I risked a peek and saw men clad in dark fatigues leaping for cover as a