Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,108
out, he would have had to rip most of Mab’s neck open along with it, and I can’t imagine that would have been good for her combat effectiveness, immortal or not. Instead, he sliced it away as easily as a seamstress snips a thread, before beginning to lower Mab’s head again.
I let myself look concerned, drew in a breath and my power, and waited.
The Fomor Sorcerers’ Club chose to attack me when I looked distracted. I mean, who wouldn’t, but especially these jerks.
Predictable.
They lobbed those bilious green spheres of acid at me.
I spun toward them, my hand lifted, fingers spread, and pulled out an old one. I sent forth my power in the same moment that I drew on the silent gale of magic in the air, shouting, “Ventas servitas!”
On an ordinary night, the gale that my spell conjured would have been able to toss furniture around a room.
Tonight, I could have tossed furniture trucks.
The gale caught the spheres in midair, hurtling them back toward their origins on a nearly flat trajectory. The FSC was pretty good. Of the dozen orbs, eleven of their creators were quick enough to unravel the spell that held the acid in its sphere, which the furious gale promptly atomized and dispersed over an area too large to remain dangerous.
That twelfth, guy, though. Maybe he was somebody’s nephew, because he didn’t figure out that his own spell was coming back at him until it broke on his chin.
As endings went that night, his didn’t make the top ten. But on any other night, I’d have been impressed at the results. The acid was considerably more destructive to flesh than it had been to steel and concrete. It even turned his square yellow teeth into slurry.
I dropped the wind spell, struck a cheesy karate pose, and said, “Waaaaaah!” in the style of Bruce Lee. “Which one of you has brought me my nunchucks?”
My humor is wasted, wasted upon most of the supernatural community. I mean, my God. They really need to get out into the world more. For instance, the FSC hesitated and glanced at one another, as if to ask if anyone had understood me. Or, hell, maybe they were so ignorant of the mighty Bruce Lee that they didn’t even get that it was a joke and were looking for some kind of traitor among themselves.
In that time, I glanced back at Butters, who was tugging on the other end of the rebar now and seemed to be having little luck. Mab’s flesh had engulfed the rebar tightly enough to form a vacuum seal, and Butters was having a hell of a time getting it out.
“Boot to the head!” I shouted at Butters.
He blinked, and said, “Nah, nah?”
“Augh, you nerd!”
The FSC had decided to stop worrying about whatever I’d had to say, meanwhile. They turned their focus on me again, and I felt them gathering power to strike—and they wouldn’t go with the same attack a second time.
I shook out my shield bracelet, sending power coursing into it, building up layers of magical defenses in a half-dome shape in front of me. My shield bracelet went scorching hot almost instantly: Even if I’d had the additional magical fuel from all the power in the air, the tool wasn’t designed to handle all the extra juice—but it was my only chance of surviving a strike from all of them.
“Boot to the head!” I shouted again.
“Nah, nah?” Butters sang back tentatively.
“No, dammit!” I screamed. “Boot! Head!” I lifted a foot and waved it.
Butters’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. And then went a bit wider in pure intimidation.
The FSC struck at me with black lightning in staggered bursts. The bolts rained in like a thunderstorm, irregular and savage, spaced maybe half a second apart. I stumbled, fell to a knee, and poured everything I could into the shield, and for a few seconds the world was blinding, deafening fury.
When it passed, my shield bracelet was actually glowing red-hot at the edges, and I could smell my own scorched hair and flesh, even if I didn’t feel much of it. (I still felt the burn Butters had given me, though. That one wasn’t stopping.) Except for a half circle in front of me, the concrete was seared black for ten feet in every direction—the burn’s end was precisely described by the glowing edge of my shield. There was no sound, no sound at all, other than this ringing sensation in my skull.