Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,25

must find her if possible, or wait for her to reveal herself if not.”

“That means we have to react to her,” the Erlking objected.

“Yes,” Mab said. “We must be adaptable, above all. Then we must confront her and force her to expend power against us.”

“Uh,” I said. “That’s . . . going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“I expect many to die,” Mab said. “Once we have engaged her we must grind her down and, when we have weakened her as much as possible, drive her to the water.” Her huge, luminous green-grey eyes turned up toward me. “Where we must hope that the will of my Knight is sufficient to contend with hers.”

I swallowed. “Yeah. What happens if I miss?”

Mab regarded me steadily. “I should think that the Last Titan will laugh and do precisely what she said she would do. Destroy this city and anyone who stands in her way.”

Hoo boy.

“So it’s all resting on me,” I said.

“We’ll do the heavy lifting for you, Hoss,” Ebenezar promised. “You just finish the job.”

“Yes,” Mab said. “Do not fail.”

I looked down at the map.

In one of those little blue circles, there was a little girl who was probably asleep by now, watched over by Knights and angels.

And by me.

My chest hurt a little and I carefully packed the feeling away, bottling it, ready to be used later. My terror for my child would not make me better able to defend her. Storing it up and using it to power spells that would destroy the things trying to hurt her would.

Damn right, Harry.

Do. Not. Fail.

“First things first,” I said. “I’m going to need pizza.”

Chapter

Seven

Getting pizza wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. There was plenty of frozen stuff in the freezers in Castle Marcone’s kitchens to feed hungry Einherjaren, and the gas was still working fine. So, in a little less than half an hour, I had several pizzas delivered to the roof.

In that time, twenty more assassin squid streaked across the sky. With the razor-wire canopy, they couldn’t dive straight down, so their runs weren’t as fast—but they were determined. One of them went for Childs, and one of Marcone’s people dived in the way to intercept. He took a tentacle across the throat and went down screaming.

An Einherjar with a medical kit came sprinting, but there was nothing to be done. Marcone’s gunman thrashed and flailed so hard that I could hear the snap and crackle of breaking bone and tearing cartilage. He emitted a single-tone, high-pitched scream that went on and on, growing rougher and rougher—until the venom in the myriad tiny wounds just dissolved the flesh of his throat and it erupted into a small fountain of gore.

And that was the first death of the night.

The Redcap proved handiest for this work. He stood by with a suppressed nine-millimeter, cat-pupiled eyes half-closed, standing in a perfectly relaxed posture, and waited. Rather casually, he brought down fourteen of the twenty or so assassin-beasts. The last squidward before the pizza came up slammed into Cristos’s back and clubbed him to the roof, but his suit was at least as heavily enchanted with defenses as my own—and Yoshimo’s sword cut the squid in half before it had bounced off Cristos and fallen to the floor. He hadn’t taken any of the venom, so he would still be in the fight.

Once the pizza got there, I had them take it to the far side of the battlements from where the White Council had set up shop. Then I strode over to Molly and tapped her on the shoulder.

Molly hadn’t changed into mail and was still wearing the dive suit she’d had on at the kraken fight. She sat cross-legged, her back straight, her palms resting on her knees. Winter Fae, pixie-sized, but more savage and vicious-looking than my crew, hovered in a cloud around her, darting in and away with messages as she coordinated the movement of troops, I assumed.

She turned to look at me and I froze in place for a moment. It took her a couple of seconds to focus on me, her expression settled in the liquid serenity of deep focus. She spoke, her voice rich and sleepy-sensual. “What is it, my Knight?”

Her eyes had changed.

They were a deep, glacial blue-green. And her pupils had changed shape. They had become feline, like most of the Sidhe.

She blinked several times, focusing on me by degrees, coming up out of the state of concentration she’d been in, and as she