Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,36

engages us,” he said to the nearest of the Einherjaren, and one of the tallest. The man nodded and passed the order down the line.

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

From down the street, my street, I heard the sound of shattering glass.

Someone screamed. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was high-pitched and desperate. The human voice rang out surprisingly loud in the stillness of the night.

That was a person. Terrified.

Someone who lived on my street.

I heard the frantic panic fire from a pistol, maybe someone’s revolver. A scream, something that sounded too harsh and brassy to be human. There was a long, drawn-out howl, then a flash of light, and I saw something red and flickering hit a car about a hundred yards down the street. There was a breathless quarter second, and then the car went up in a fireball as its gas tank exploded.

I could see figures, furry or fur-clad, rushing toward the open front doors of one of a row of rental houses. There were few supernaturally significant thresholds to speak of on such properties, little protection from the powers of darkness.

My stomach twisted in fear and rage. Every instinct in my body urged me forward. The predator’s territoriality within the Winter Knight’s mantle was in complete accord, the need for violence, to defend my territory, to rend my foes, pulsing through my veins with every heartbeat.

“There,” I said, and pointed a shaking hand. “We have to help them.”

“That is not our role in this fight,” said Vadderung.

Another scream came down the street. This time there was no mistaking it.

It was a child’s voice, a single high-pitched note.

“Hoss,” said Ebenezar warningly.

I couldn’t see. My vision was narrowing to a tunnel. My chest heaved.

I looked to my left. In the tunnel of my vision, Mab was a slender, pale white light, her eyes bright, feline, narrowed. She watched me.

“We have to help them,” I said, louder and harder.

Mab’s teeth showed.

“We can’t,” Ebenezar said. “Hoss, there’s too many of them. We can’t commit until we know.”

I stared around the rooftop. Then I said, “To hell with all of you.”

And I did something I’d been working every day for months not to do.

I let the Winter mantle do its thing.

I went off the roof in a leap, windmilling my arms and legs. I hit the ground, let my body break my fall at its natural bending points, dropped into a forward roll, and came up running, moving as quick and sure as any creature of the wild.

There was a heavy thud, and a thousand pounds of River Shoulders landed next to me, an eager growl bubbling in his chest that sounded freaking tectonic. Ahead of me, another car exploded, part of the fireball catching one end of the rental house and enveloping it in flames. Indistinct inhuman figures leapt in through the front door.

And me and a genuine, honest-to-God Bigfoot let out simultaneous roars of rage, one way more impressive than the other, and launched ourselves at the invaders.

Chapter

Nine

I caught their scent at about sixty feet.

It was a wild, fierce smell, something that hit my hindbrain and set the hairs all along my spine up straight. Ever smelled a predator’s den? There’s the musk of the creature’s odor, mixed in with the scent of urine, a little bit of rotten meat, and the faint sweetness of marrow with the rasping dryness of cracked bone.

That same predator reek hit me as we closed in on the invaders—figures with massive, fur-outlined bodies and gnarled, muscular limbs. I got a good look at the first of them as we hit the sidewalk outside the embattled home.

It looked almost human. Skin the color of wet ashes. Six and a half feet tall, maybe, with the lean, ropy muscle of someone who can cover a lot of ground in a hurry. Its hair was a mane, ferocious and long, with feathers and claws bound in among it. The horns of a stag either grew from its skull or had been bound there somehow. A heavy mantle of furs over a long cloak of the same gave its lean torso some kind of protection, and it carried a long spear of some blackened metal in its hands.

Even as we closed, the creature had whirled toward us, bringing the tip of the spear up. There was a low howling sound, and a flicker of reddish light gathered around the creature’s hands. The light flashed up the shaft of the spear, hitting a number