Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,153
And the Titan herself . . . God, what a blunt instrument. What a big, loud distraction. So that you could get inside.”
Justine’s head turned to face me. The lightening sky was behind her. There was nothing to be seen of her expression but blackness.
I limped forward a couple of paces. Nothing specific was any worse than it had been an hour ago, but even the immunity of the Winter mantle had its limits. My joints felt like they’d been dipped in plaster and were slowly drying stiff.
“And every single living family member of mine, personally, was placed in danger. All of them. To make sure I had the maximum amount of personal worry to distract me.”
Justine has incredible cheekbones. They shifted, slightly altering her shadowy profile as she smiled.
“Something about Justine wasn’t . . . quite right, earlier, in the apartment,” I said. And I let my voice harden. “How long ago did you possess the girl?”
Justine was silent for a moment. Then she shook her head and said, “I think the problem is, you just don’t sound all that bright, wizard. Perhaps it’s skewing my expectations.”
She turned toward me, slim and graceful, steady on the deck.
I faced her and tried not to pitch over the rail as the Water Beetle bumped along the waves. It had been a long night. And I didn’t have much left, physically or otherwise.
“Tell me your name,” I said, and slid some of my will into my voice.
“You know who I am,” Justine purred in answer.
Then she reached out with one hand and ripped a four-foot section of the ship’s steel handrail off its metal struts.
I blinked wearily and fancied I could hear grains of sand pattering to the deck from my eyes. Now I knew what Ethniu had felt like at the end. “Humor me,” I said, with more of my will. “Tell me your name.”
Justine, or whatever being was driving Justine’s body around, turned toward me and began slow, stalking paces forward. It made some abortive, choking noises in its throat, and then said, the words drawn from it reluctantly, “It will do you no good once I’ve caved in your skull. Nemesis am I called.”
There. Bingo.
For years, shadowy forces had been driving events in Chicago and in the wider world. For years, I’d been picking up threads and finding them connected to others. For years, I’d been flailing around trying to get an idea of the forces that had been arrayed against me.
And tonight, one of the players was in the open.
Right there. Behind Justine’s eyes.
And I was going to get answers.
I didn’t have much left in me but pure, stiff-necked, muleheaded contrariness.
But even after the night I’d had, I still had plenty of it.
“I don’t care what they call you,” I spat. The effort of maintaining my will made it impossible to move my feet as the slender girl stalked forward with her steel bar. “Thrice I say and done. Tell me your name.”
The slender figure froze in front of me, shuddering.
Then she exhaled in a slow, utterly sensual voice, “I am the doubt that wards away sleep. I am the flaw that corrupts, the infected wound, the false fork in the trail. I am the gnawer, the worm in the book, the maggot that burrows in the mind’s eye.”
She shuddered in bizarre ecstasy and panted, in a frantic whisper, “I am He Who Walks Beside.”
Hell’s bells.
A Walker.
And if I hadn’t twigged to its presence, I would have set it loose on Demonreach—the prison for the great nightmares of the world. Ethniu wasn’t the biggest thing in it—not by a long shot. And an Outsider with the power of a Walker, turned loose inside the island’s defenses, might well be able to destroy them and set loose every horror inside.
Hell. There’d have been an Ethniu for every city, if the place got emptied out.
The weight of my will, once finished forcing the information from the possessing being, flooded out of me and left me barely able to stand. I staggered back, away from the slender figure in front of me.
Justine, calmly, pursued.
“I hope it felt good to scratch that itch,” she purred. “This is the end of your story, starborn.”
“How long?” I asked. “How long have you been in Justine?”
Justine waved the steel bar in a vague gesture. “Mortal time is such a limited concept. A few years. Ever since she became close to Lara.”
I glowered at her. “You conceived my brother’s child intentionally.”