Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,139

He clambered over several yards away from me and fell silent, watching the murky shadows.

I wanted to say something back, about how he was a running mouth, but instead I fell silent, gathered up some of my power, and shaped it into the mildest, softest veil I could around me. Too much power in it, and Ethniu might become aware of the energies in motion.

She was wounded now. Hunting. Hurting. Furious. Frightened.

Like one of us.

She’d be focused on retrieving the Eye, focused on securing its power, on wiping away her enemies, who were everyone, forever.

I wouldn’t matter unless I got between her and the Eye.

So I stood still and silent and let the haze of the battle and the more subtle effort of my will gather around me. And waited.

It wasn’t long.

Ethniu came down the slope on all fours, crawling with perfect grace and mangled limbs, like a wounded spider, holding herself up on the stump of her arm as easily as if she’d been born that way. Her burned face was . . . sort of seething, with some kind of thick mist or steam, as her body fought the injuries Odin had inflicted.

Her eye locked on Marcone and she let out a low, cackling exhalation.

“The mortal who thinks himself a lord,” the Titan purred.

“Fool,” Marcone replied by way of greeting, his tone polite and pitched to carry loudly.

“What?” Ethniu demanded.

“If you had a mind,” Marcone said, “you would have used restraint. You would have arisen from the water with no warning to anyone. You would have unleashed a wave of expendable troops on the city, blown down a building or two, and returned to the sea to watch the havoc unfold.” He shook his head. “I will simply never understand the need some people seem to feel to be proven correct in front of their enemies. It’s quite childish.”

I blinked.

Was Marcone . . . talking smack?

“Give me what is mine, mortal,” Ethniu snarled. “And I will kill you swiftly.”

“Your negotiating skills would seem to need work as well,” Marcone added.

Behind us, there was a series of roaring detonations, from back by the park. Sorcery, maybe.

I was an idiot. An exhausted, terrified idiot. Marcone didn’t do anything just to be doing it.

He was providing cover for me.

So I started moving whenever they spoke, as soft and quiet as I knew how. It wasn’t as quiet as usual. I’d just been too battered. Even now, I didn’t feel pain, exactly. Mostly my body just seemed very confused about what the hell was going on. One moment it would be too hot, the next freezing, and nothing felt like it was moving quite right, so my balance kept wobbling. The Winter mantle had been stretched to its limits. Or rather, it had stretched me to mine.

It felt like I was getting closer to Game Over than I had before.

“You aren’t anyone,” the Titan said. “You’re nothing. Just an animal. An animal near the top of its class on one little world.”

“And yet, I walk where I will,” Marcone said. “I sleep where and when I please. I eat when I hunger. I choose what to make of my life. I am free.”

I crept closer.

“Who are you?” Marcone asked back, his voice ringing defiance. “A daughter unloved by her monstrous father? Sold and traded like a horse? Hiding in a dark cave with her useless hangers-on for millennia? And now lashing out with her daddy’s gun.” He shook his head and bounced the Eye in his hand. “It appears that it is better to be a mortal than a Titan, these days.”

She crept closer, vibrating with tension. “Give me,” she seethed, “the Eye.”

Marcone stared at the Titan and appeared to choose his words the way a surgeon would his implements. “Be a good girl,” he said. “And go get it.”

With an expression of absolute nonchalant contempt, he tossed the smoldering Eye over his shoulder and into the waters of Lake Michigan.

Which instantly began to boil.

I was close.

The Titan bared her teeth in a hideous grimace, enraged beyond making a sound, beyond even attempting communication, and came at him.

A rock rolled beneath my ankle.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Ethniu spun and flung a rock at me with her good hand.

I saw it coming and felt like a moron. Ethniu had had no reason to have a conversation with Marcone. She’d known I was there all along, but she hadn’t known exactly where. So she’d been using the slight sound of my own movements to