Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,51
had those eyes in it could be nothing but a mask. “You’ll never value information that comes to you easily.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Something ugly flickered in that smile for a few beats. Then Drakul shook his head. “I would tell you to ask of your own White Council what they aren’t telling you, what they bred you for, and what they expect you to do.” He considered. “Well. Except that it seems unlikely you’ll have the chance on this side of the veil, I’m afraid.”
“Chump like you?” I gasped. “Tonight, you’re the warm-up act.”
Drakul regarded me for a second. Then he made an exasperated little sound and put one hand on his hip. “I’ll be open with you, starborn. At this point of conversations like this one, I often offer the dark gift of immortality to someone in your position. It’s occasionally a way to obtain a useful tool, but mostly I just want to see how they react. One sees people for who they truly are when they face death . . . but, honestly, five minutes of you in my life has been quite enough. You’ve no . . . gravitas. No decorum. No style at all.” He knelt over me and lifted the knife toward my throat. “But I suppose your blood will call to the dead as well as anyone’s.”
“Knock-knock,” I said.
Drakul frowned down at me and arched an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Here I am facing death and telling you a knock-knock joke. Why would I do such a thing?” I gave him the best grin I could while clenching my teeth. “Eternity is a long time to wonder about a punch line. Knock-knock.”
“Who,” said Drakul, in his mellifluous accent, his eyes narrowed, “is there?”
“Thousand-pound gorilla,” I rasped.
“Thousand-pound gorilla who?” asked Drakul.
And River Shoulders roared and hit him with a twelve-foot-long concrete obelisk.
One second, Drakul loomed over me. The next there was an enormous sound and an explosion of shattering concrete that left half a dozen little cuts on my face, and Drakul was nowhere to be seen. The weight vanished from me so abruptly that for a second I thought I was levitating off the ground. I was suddenly dizzy, and my vision narrowed to a tunnel.
“Now, that,” I gasped, “is comedy.”
River Shoulders roared and bounded after Drakul, jumping with all four limbs.
Drakul, for his part, tumbled calmly, and if his shoes had cost more than some vehicles I had driven, they held up well enough as he dug them into the grass to arrest his momentum and bring himself to a controlled halt among tumbling fragments of concrete. He was wearing, I kid you not, a tuxedo under the long black cloak.
And he looked annoyed.
River Shoulders lowered his shoulder to slam into Drakul, but the big guy might as well have been trying to ram water. Drakul took a step and vanished, out from in front of the charging Sasquatch and to one side—where he crouched and swept his arm out at shin height to the Sasquatch, catching River Shoulders’ enormous leg in the crook of his elbow and arresting its momentum as Drakul rose to his feet. The Sasquatch went forward in a sprawl, which he could not turn into a controlled roll before crashing through two enormous side-by-side tombstones.
River Shoulders began to rise and then sank back to the earth with a groan.
Hell’s bells.
Drakul turned toward River Shoulders with his knife, and I saw what was coming in my head as clearly and sharply as if I was remembering it. The Forest People aren’t exactly wizards. They just sort of live their lives so steeped in the world of magic that they just do it, the way a fish swims or a bird flies. Their aura of life energy is especially dense and potent, constantly absorbing power from the natural world around them.
Which would make the big guy a great big tank of nitrous for Drakul’s necromantic summoning, if the master of the Black Court could spill River’s blood to fuel the spell.
I grabbed my staff and brought it to bear, feeling the seething energy stored within its runes and sigils vibrate to life. The staff began to glow with green-gold light, even as I reached out to a portion of the energy stored within it, stirring it, urging it to glow even more brightly. I wanted him to see this one coming.
“Hey!” I shouted. “You! Ugly!”
Yeah, yeah. Not my best insult work. But you know. It’s the thought that counts.