Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,154

honestly. It is your kind’s greatest weakness. Once he understood that his mate and his offspring would die if he did not follow my instructions, well . . .” She shrugged.

“So you sent him at Etri. At the svartalves, someone almost everyone respects. Why? To shatter the Accords?”

“Apocalypse isn’t an event,” Nemesis murmured. “It is a frame of mind.”

I probably would have staggered anyway, but the phrase hit hard.

“This was less a plan than . . . an act of faith, I suppose you would say,” the Outsider continued through Justine’s lips.

“Faith?” I asked.

“In what is coming,” the Walker said. “The unraveling of all things into darkness and silence.”

“Empty Night,” I breathed.

“Empty Night,” the creature echoed, in the hushed tone of a holy phrase. “So we pressed the attacks at the Outer Gates. While I sowed havoc within the walls of reality. We loosed some of the primal forces of your own precious Creation against you. Undermined Mab, her people, the Accords, the delusion of order you force upon the universe with your useless presence.” She smiled, dropping lower, the motion feline, sensual, hypnotic. “You may have survived the day. But the deed is done. We are the tide. Infinite. Unrelenting. And one day, starborn, make no mistake, we will wipe away all that you know. All we need is a single opening.”

“Must suck,” I panted, “to get whipped by some stupid punk from Chicago. ’Cause it looks to me like I beat you.”

Something ugly went through her voice. “There was never a victory for you to gain,” Nemesis hissed. “The mortals have been given terror they have not known in centuries. There is nothing more that need be done. They are your death stroke. Now I need only wait.”

I finally reached the back of the boat and said, “Funny you should mention waiting.”

Justine tilted her head, too far, silent.

“You know how you don’t want to arrive on Demonreach, Walker?” The rear railing hit the backs of my thighs. “You don’t want to show up all on your lonesome. Alfred hates that. That would be like sprinting into a meat grinder.”

The gathering light showed me Justine’s face as her eyes widened and she whipped her head over her shoulder.

The black mass of Demonreach, backlit by the golden sky, loomed directly ahead of us, swiftly larger, as the boat chugged toward its shores.

Justine whirled back and lunged toward me. “No!”

I smirked at her, spread my arms, and fell over the back of the boat, into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan.

With the last shreds of my will, I called to Demonreach.

And the last thing I felt before things went black was green-gold light, and a huge stony hand clamping down on my shoulder, tearing me away from the Outsider’s desperate grasp.

Chapter

Thirty-six

Those next few days remain a montage in my head.

I woke up bumping along the surface of Lake Michigan in a rubber boat being run by Lara’s people. I vaguely remembered reaching shore and having Alfred store the Eye safely away. Demonreach had allowed Riley and two of his men to approach and pick me up off the shoreline, after throwing poor Freydis two hundred yards out into the lake. They’d found me unconscious with my legs still in the freezing water and were treating the Winter Knight for hypothermia. Which is a bit like fitting a polar bear for a fur coat—it doesn’t help the bear and it makes him sort of grumpy.

But they got me back to shore.

I remember insisting where Riley was to take me when we got there.

To her.

To her body, I mean.

Everything was chaos in Chicago, but it was the kind of chaos that people were more used to. There were soldiers and police everywhere. Emergency vehicles of all kinds were everywhere. The air was constantly full of the chop of helicopter blades.

If you knew what to look for, you could see signs of the presence of the Little Folk. They were everywhere in the wreckage, at the will of the Winter Lady, leaving enough signs and clues to lead rescuers to the wounded among the rubble—as they would later ensure the recovery of the dead. They wouldn’t find absolutely everyone, but you’d hear newscasters remarking on the unusual dedication and success of the search-and-rescue teams in Chicago for years after.

In the area around the Bean, the cops were see-through, to me anyway, members of Mab’s personal retinue underneath glamours that were more emotional than physical. When a Sidhe pretending to be a police officer spoke