Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,28
utility blade or X-Acto knife, he bore in his hands a spear as long as he was with a broad head suitable for stabbing or slashing, made from the same metal as his armor. Upon his back, between his wings, was a pair of short blades hanging from a harness, also in the same kind of metal.
Toot deftly avoided a clutch of darting pixie messengers and came streaking directly toward me—ignoring the circle completely and coming to a screeching halt in midair in front of the Redcap at eye level.
“Avaunt, scoundrel!” he piped at the Sidhe warrior. For a pixie, Toot had an absolutely roaring basso of a voice. For everyone else, he sounded like a cute cartoon character. “I saw you giving my lord dirty looks!”
The Redcap narrowed his eyes and showed his teeth in a lazy smile. “Care, little one. I’d prefer not to waste a bullet on you when there’s so much more interesting game in the offing.”
“I’d like to see you try it!” huffed Toot, buzzing in a little circle that sent motes of light exploding out from him like a cartoon figure’s cloud of dust.
Even as I watched, there was a flitting shadow, and by the time the sound of a second set of buzzing wings was audible, a slender figure in black fae armor, almost Toot’s size, was hovering just behind the Redcap, the tip of her little black lance touching the skin of the back of the Redcap’s neck with delicate precision. The pixie holding the lance was female, pale of skin and dark of hair, and she had way too much makeup around her eyes.
“Think carefully, biggun,” the pixie piped. “For though one day I will end his miserable life, while my durance continues I will lend my arm to the major general.”
The Redcap’s eyes shifted behind him. By the time they moved back to Toot, the pixie’s distraction was over, and his lance was resting a hairsbreadth from the Redcap’s eye.
“Lacuna adores me!” Toot shrilled.
“We are comrades in arms,” Lacuna said. “Then I will kill you.”
“It is love!” Toot insisted.
“When you’re dead,” Lacuna said, “I get your teeth.”
Toot beamed broadly. “See? She loves me for me!”
The Redcap took a deep breath and said, “Boo!”
Both pixies fluttered back a dozen feet before the sound was done leaving his mouth.
“Dresden,” the Redcap said, a touch plaintively.
“Major General,” I said, “Lacuna, stand down. Tonight, he is the enemy of my enemy.”
Toot gasped and gripped his spear more tightly. “A double enemy!”
Lacuna buzzed over to hover near Toot. “No, idiot. It means he is an ally right now.”
Toot gripped his lance in both hands, his arms extended to full length, and buzzed in a happy circle. “My girlfriend is so smart!”
“I am not your girlfriend,” Lacuna said sullenly. “I am a prisoner of war.”
“Harry, I must say,” Toot-Toot said, dropping his voice to a stage sotto voce, “that’s frozen pizza. What are you doing?”
“It’s symbolic pizza,” I said.
“Symbolic pizza sucks!” Toot shouted.
“None of it is good for you,” Lacuna insisted.
“Guys!” I said. “The pizza—all the pizza—is in danger!”
That got their attention.
Toot-Toot whirled to face me in horror. “What?!”
Lacuna’s face suffused with joy. “What!?”
I gave them the kindergarten-level, probably cheaply animated rundown on who Ethniu was. “And now,” I concluded, “she’s coming here to kill all the people.”
“Oh no!” Toot wailed. He buzzed in a vertical circle. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”
“That will definitely be better for your teeth,” Lacuna said.
“The stars take my teeth, woman!” Toot bellowed.
Lacuna gasped, shocked.
“This cannot be borne!” Toot trumpeted. “It cannot be endured! We must fight!” He shot out into the open air above the street, spinning as he went, so filled with fury was his tiny form, glowing brighter and brighter. “We must fight!” he called, and his shrill voice rattled from the stones of the castle. “WE MUST FIGHT!” came his tiny roar, echoing down the streets.
And something happened that I had not expected.
The stars fell on Castle Marcone.
One moment, the bustle of the command center was proceeding along. The next, glowing lights, some as tiny as the little elements inside Christmas lights, some as large as beach balls, all began descending from overhead, emerging from corners and crevices of houses, rising from gardens and bushes and gliding from trees. In moments, the torchlit night, full of shadows and uncertainty, had become filled with an ambient aurora that