Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,112

him a little more into the shelter of Mab and the unicorn’s shadow.

“Harry,” he whispered raggedly. “What the hell are we doing standing here? We should not be here.”

I felt exactly the same way. These were powers older than the modern world of Chicago, beings that had seen years pass beyond the imagining of mere mortals, borne witness to events of myth and legend with their own eyes. To them, this night had simply been a skirmish, not a major metropolitan-scale apocalypse. Tens of thousands of people had died already this evening. Hundreds of thousands more might follow.

And my daughter was somewhere behind me.

The fear and rage I’d been keeping safely bottled all evening, all centered around that one little figure, probably sleeping in the safe room at Michael’s house, flickered with the most infinitesimal of sparks. That spark found ample fuel and began to burn like a tiny star inside me.

Maggie.

This bitch was not going to hurt my little girl.

And with that flicker of knowledge, the kindling of will inside me, the knife at my hip throbbed with a slow, steady, quiet pulse.

It had a heartbeat.

“Steady,” I growled. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be.”

Ethniu began striding forward, her giant form taking steps that would have made mine look like a toddler’s. “Yield!” she bellowed, and the force of it sent the skirt of Mab’s battle-mail dress flying backwards along with the unicorn’s unreasonably silken mane and tail, and Mab’s bloody starlit hair. “Bow!”

The force of will that condensed on Mab in that word was so dense that I thought it was going to break something. Like maybe the universe. It was a sphere of pure psychic pressure so intense that I knew that if it had been directed at me, it would have compressed my mind into something too dense and inert to function, like a tiny diamond formed from crushed coal.

I’m what you might call oppositionally defiant to authoritarian figures. Someone who doesn’t always do as he’s told. Maybe even a little bit of a troublemaker.

That will would have crushed mine, flat.

Period.

It wasn’t a question of weakness or strength. This was simply power orders of magnitude beyond my ability to contest. The force of that will wasn’t even directed at me, and it was everything I could do not to fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness in the face of that terrible rage.

Butters had an excellently ordered mind, but he hadn’t had the training I had in mental defenses. He let out a sob of utter despair and would have fallen if I hadn’t had his shoulder. I dropped to a knee with him, steadying him as he swayed, his entire body trembling violently.

Except for one hand. It stayed steady on the Sword.

I do not know what power she had won, what knowledge she had gained, what experience she had suffered, or what sacrifices she had made that enabled Mab to defy the absolute force of the Titan’s will.

But though her shoulders bowed as if under enormous weight, though the Winter unicorn staggered beneath her, Mab was Mab. She steadied the beast, and her expression locked into a cold, steady mask. She drew in a breath, barely visible as a blur in the air compressed by the Titan’s will, and said, simply, “No.”

The word rang out in pure silvery truth, her breath condensed into a Wintry plume.

Ethniu’s will recoiled, shattering like a sphere of immaterial glass.

The Titan roared her fury.

And with a shriek of power meant to unmake the world, Ethniu turned the Eye upon Mab.

Chapter

Twenty-nine

I felt it in my guts and in my soul when the Eye struck Mab.

She sat ramrod straight on the dark unicorn. Even as Ethniu screamed, Mab lifted her left hand, slim and pale, fingers spread evenly in a defensive gesture. Frost gathered upon her, upon the flanks of the unicorn, crusted the ground all around her, even as the horrible power of the Eye washed over Mab.

The sound alone, as those two sources of power met, was enough to drive a strong mind mad. I couldn’t have told you what it sounded like, specifically. It was too huge a noise for that. I can tell you that I started screaming out in pure reflexive protest against that sound, and that my voice was lost in the din. The Winter unicorn reared, trumpeting its defiance, and the dark saber spiraling from its forehead almost seemed to drink in a portion of that fury, while Mab flawlessly adjusted her balance upon