Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,145

the apocalypse sky, “ETHNIU, DAUGHTER OF BALOR, I BIND THEE!”

A storm hit my mind. Even after Ethniu had expended such energies, after she had fought so many foes, after she had laid low a high school gymnasium full of supernatural heavyweights, the raw strength of the Titan’s remaining will was overwhelming. It tore at my perceptions, flooding them with random images and smells and sensations. It was like standing in a sandstorm, only instead of inflicting pain, every random grain forced you through an experience, a memory, so disjointed and intense and rapid that there was nothing to focus on, to hold on to. A flash sensation of summer-warmed grass between my toes. Plunging into a pool of chilled water in the hour before dawn. An image of watching warmly over a field worked by people with bronze tools. Another of strangling someone to death with my bare hands. And the images doubled, redoubled, multiplied into thousands of separate impressions all coming at me at once.

Memories. These were the substance of Ethniu, the pieces of her that railed against my will. She was going to hammer them into my mind as I tried to complete the binding, sandblast my psyche to pieces with an overwhelming flood of impressions.

I had to get to an image, a moment, that was mine. Me. That was strong enough to hold all the rest together.

I found one image.

Maggie, holding on to me with all four limbs, her little heart beating against my chest, while Mouse leaned against me, a solid presence of utter faithfulness and love.

And that was enough.

If the Titan shredded away everything else I had, this would be enough to build on. Friends. Family. Love. I focused on that memory, of my girl holding on to me with desperate strength, my fuzzy friend beside us, while her father’s arms held her safe.

The storm of the Titan’s will raged. But I found myself standing in the eye of the hurricane with the most quiet, defiant smile that had ever landed on my face.

The world came back to me. I could feel the Spear in my hands again, the broken rock and concrete beneath my feet.

Ethniu writhed and twisted in the center of the circle of campfire light, coming up off the ground as if gravity had suddenly stopped functioning.

“Bound, bound, bound!” I called. “Thrice said and done! Begone!”

The Titan shrieked in outrage.

My left eardrum exploded. Or maybe imploded. Whatever, it wasn’t there anymore. The world turned into one of those barrel rides where they spin so fast you stick to the wall. Only I didn’t have a wall to lean on.

I had the Spear of fucking Destiny.

THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM

It was as if I had started some vast and momentous engine.

“Alfred!” I screamed, and kicked the crystal out into the water of the lake.

The moment the bloodied crystal hit the water, there was a sound. A deep, deep sound, like a rumbling in earth miles below us. The surface of Lake Michigan went suddenly still—and then began to jump and vibrate like the indicator bars of God’s biggest stereo.

A light appeared in the water. I don’t mean like a spotlight or a glowing aura. This thing was huge. Hundreds of yards across. And it came through the water at a speed so great that it couldn’t readily be estimated.

But it pushed a bow wave ahead of it. A huge one.

“Oh crap,” I muttered.

In the water, Marcone snapped his head toward the wave, then calmly murmured something. He abruptly zipped through the water as though being pulled by a friendly dolphin and attained the shore.

“Dresden!”

“Go!” I said. “I’ve got to hold her here!”

Marcone gave me a look and said, “Of course you do.” He eyed the incoming wave, gold and green and across the entire horizon. Then he muttered something in a language I didn’t know, answered himself in the same language and a different voice, and then said, in English, “No, I don’t have any gopher wood. No one has any gopher wood. I’m not even sure it exists anymore.” Then he shook his head, looked at the ground, and started muttering and drawing in power.

The wave loomed larger. Ethniu screamed again, but I put my shoulder up against my right ear, so that was fine.

There was a hideous smell in the air. I looked around and saw broken concrete beginning to melt into slurry while Marcone chanted in some harsh-sounding language.

The wave loomed up, millions of tons of water, coming