Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,138

her weapon—I think the Japanese called it a naginata—at the Titan, to no more effect than leaving sullen red lines of heat upon the Titanic bronze coating Ethniu’s form.

Ethniu batted Lara aside like a rag doll and rose—only to stumble, as Lara’s shroud-armor writhed off the vampire like a living thing, like some kind of bizarre invertebrate from the deep sea, and wrapped around the Titan’s knees, binding them together. Ethniu fell back down again and was forced to briefly struggle against the living cloth.

Lara, naked as a jaybird, her pale skin gleaming, almost glowing, scrambled to one side and thrust her weapon at the Titan’s fingers, trying to keep them from getting hold of the binding armor.

“She wants the Eye!” Lara screamed. “Go, Harry!”

The Spear felt heavy in my hands. It still had the power to hurt the Titan. But even with the backup of the Winter mantle, I was too battered and slow to get through to her.

And I needed to get her to the water anyway.

Marcone knew the plan. And he’d been thinking about it harder than me.

So I flung myself after him, plunging out of the clear air around the battlefield and into the choking, smoky haze over the city.

It was getting hard to tell where the park had been. The ground had been torn apart by the forces unleashed there. We got to where the footbridge had stood and found that Ethniu had used the Eye to facilitate the crossing of the avenue below for her army. She had blown the bridge and the retaining walls into slopes of rubble. And the area beyond was even worse. Streets, buildings, trees, light poles, everything that had not been able to flee had suffered destruction as if she had risen from the lake and pounded everything in her line of sight to rubble with the power of the Eye. The retaining wall beside the water was . . . just kind of a really, really rocky beach now.

I caught up to Marcone as he scrambled across the rough ground, running wherever possible. When I finally drew up beside him, he increased his pace, and I was hard-pressed to stay with him. Granted, he didn’t look like he’d been through as much physical discomfort as I had that night, but even so he moved damned well, and like he’d been to places like this before.

“Can we use the weapon?” he asked in a terse tone as we ran.

Behind us, Ethniu let out a scream of rage, and there was a sound like metal cables tearing.

Then she screamed again. And it was closer.

“Maybe I could,” I panted. “If I had a lifetime to study it. But probably not. Something like that isn’t meant for mortals.”

“Then we have no other option,” Marcone said. “What do you need for the binding?”

“Her blood,” I said.

And I started tearing at the bag I’d carried tied shut on my belt for most of the night.

Ethniu screamed again, closer. She wasn’t moving much faster than we were. She’d had one hell of a night, too. Hell’s bells, for all I knew she was using echolocation. She had every other damned advantage.

“I take it your weapon can accomplish that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. We’d reached the beach by then, and clambered down the slope of broken rock to the edge of the water. “But it was good enough for the Son of God. I figure it’s in the right league.”

Marcone’s eyes widened. One of his hands twitched. “And the adults let you have it?”

There was a clatter of rock on rock behind us.

“There’s not much justice in the world,” I said. “This thing might work. It might not. Takes some pretty serious power to hurt her. Like, angel-level power.”

“The Swords,” he said.

“Butters is new,” I said. “He did something without thinking. This is what we’ve got.”

In the haze, in which visibility had dropped to maybe thirty feet, I heard something breathing, the bubble of a slight snarl on every exhale.

Marcone crouched, tense.

“Do you at least have a gun?” I asked. “Maybe you can distract her.”

“I have a knife,” Marcone said.

“Jusht like a gangshter,” I said. “Bringsh a knife to an apocalypshe fight.”

Marcone gave me a level look and then said, in a much more conversational tone, “Honestly, Dresden. If you used your mind half as much as your mouth, you’d be running the place by now.” He held up the Eye and spoke patiently. “I have what she wants. I will distract her.”