Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,113

its back. The concrete beneath her buckled and shattered into sand. Fire and lightning and wind whirled in a cyclone centered upon her. Bits of her hair, blown wildly by the wind, blackened and disintegrated. The fine mail covering her body was riven by the flood of energy, turning from bright mail to the dark of verdigris, and then tearing as individual rings changed from metal to some kind of blackened residue, leaving smudges of soot over pale skin.

Butters and I were like two men before a flood taking desperate shelter behind a stone.

On pure instinct, I had gathered my shield around us in a half dome that enveloped us entirely. The energy wasn’t even being directed at me—I was just trying to stop some of the random splatter that got past Mab and came in our direction.

Again, I was operating out of my weight class. The mere backwash from the Eye was almost more than I could handle. My shield bracelet heated again, and I knew I was going to have a fresh band of burn scars to go along with the old burns on the hand itself. The effort I put forward to protect us would have killed me on another night. Tonight, the power in the air made it simple, and a dozen layers of my best shielding took the brunt of the wild expenditure of energy without faltering.

I could feel the power of the Eye as it touched my shield, feel the pure, raw, undiluted hate that drove whoever wielded it. This hate wasn’t any mere mortal emotion. This was hate of the original vintage, hate as old as the universe itself, hate as hard and sharp and cold as steel, hate as hot as the fires of Hell, hate so vital, so vicious, so vitriolic, that it surpassed the understanding of my merely mortal mind.

Ethniu hated me. Me, personally, though she did not know me. The Titan hated me, hated me on a level I could not begin to understand. That I walked the earth and drew breath was enough to earn her everlasting fury.

But that was just a shadow of what she felt toward Mab.

That was personal.

Mab, slender and beautiful and deadly on her black unicorn, defying the power of the Eye as it blasted away bits of her hair, as it rent and rendered her armor. Her will manifested around her as cold, pure light, a sphere of diamond radiance that dispersed the most vicious efforts of the Eye, sent power spilling out from her and around her, like a fast-flowing river crashing into an obdurate stone. In that withering light and fury, she was a being of distilled intellect and will, pure determination and cold defiance. In that fury, she was a shadow, an outline, dark and terrible and undeniable, standing against the tide unmoving.

In that moment, I saw with my own eyes why she was called the Queen of Air and Darkness.

And, somehow, she did it. She stopped the Eye. She stood before that undeniable power and was not moved.

The red glare of the Eye faded.

For a long moment, Mab was still, her body clad only in remnants of her mail, in blackened residue and scarlet streaks and burns, her left hand raised and extended in defiance. Smoke rose from her.

Then she fell, suddenly boneless, from the unicorn’s back, collapsing to the ground as if too weak to remain upright.

Ethniu stared forward for a moment before lifting her face to the sky and crying out in vicious, spiteful triumph. She raised her hands and threw them forward, and like puppets directed by her will, the entire Fomor legion groaned and began to pace forward in stomping unison, gathering momentum like a single massive beast.

The silence gave way before the sound of boots tromping upon the ground. Like a tide, the Fomor advanced across the field, eerie signal clicks coming before them like rain before a truly terrible storm. They crossed the open field and there was nothing further to stop them.

And, I realized, nothing to shelter them.

They had marched into the open field.

And in the vaults of my mind, Mab’s voice rang out in sudden exultation. NOW, LADY MOLLY.

From the north, a fresh, chill zephyr swirled down through the city and into the park. Somewhere along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, a gull cried out in sudden excitement.

And music began to play.

At first it was just a few electric guitar notes, almost at random, bouncing among the buildings and echoing over