Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,54

a finger at Ramirez. “Give her that one to eat.”

Tentacles Guy stared at Mavra harshly. Then he dragged Ramirez over to the wounded twin. Ramirez fought against Tentacles Guy, with just as much to show for it as I had with Mavra. The other twin stretched out Ramirez’s arm and raked rotten nails across his wrists, tearing open flesh and veins with all the precision and subtlety of an ox-driven plow.

Ramirez screamed.

The downed twin fastened her rotting lips over the wound in his arm.

My friends were dead and dying.

And these . . . things . . . wanted to make of their remains a home for more monsters.

Sickness and rage filled me.

Power rushed in with them.

Mavra’s grip on my neck tightened like something driven by hydraulics, and suddenly there was nothing but blind, furious sensation filtered through the Winter mantle in a tsunami of confusing sensory input that became its own agonizing analogue of prosaic pain.

“The Master won’t mind drinking you at room temperature, Dresden,” she chided me. The universe blurred, and suddenly the floor rose to give me a full-body hug. It blew the wind out of me in an exhalation not even Mavra’s strength could shut off entirely and left me lying stunned.

“Pendejos,” Ramirez snarled. I could feel the air tighten as he drew in power.

The other twin’s hands shot out as he did, dragging his face to hers. Her milky-white eyes widened as she locked gazes with Ramirez. My friend let out a furious, despairing scream as her psychic assault began. Yeah. The Black Court had a method for dealing with the potential devastation of a wizard’s death curse—tough to put together a spell when someone is trying to climb into your brain and redecorate.

The vampires watched the dying man intently, slipping into a corpselike, absolute stillness as they did.

Carlos tried to scream again. It came out weaker.

There was nothing I could do.

And then something wispy and violet poked out from behind a tombstone twenty feet away.

Someone had seen me.

The major general was still on the job.

Toot-Toot scanned the scene quickly, flashed me a manic grin and a wink, and slid back behind the tombstone. When he emerged a moment later, he held a short sword the size of a small hunting knife in one hand.

And in the other, gripped like a severed head, was an open packet of chopped garlic from Pizza ’Spress.

Toot crouched, still grinning, and a nimbus of blue and violet energy surrounded him—and then he shot like an arrow from a bow at Mavra’s back.

There was a streak of light as Toot flew at her, slashing down with his knife at the dead-tough flesh of her back, the scalpel-sharp blade opening a deep cut.

Into which my little ally plunged his packet of garlic.

Black Court vampires are very, very tough customers. But they pay for it, in some really inconvenient vulnerabilities. You can read about them in Stoker’s book. It’s basically a field guide on how to kill Black Court vampires.

Turns out there’s a pretty good reason vampires are repelled by garlic.

Mavra’s dead flesh burst into silver-white flame.

I mean, it was awkward to see from my angle, but a freaking jet of argent fire shot out of the wound, and the sound of her shriek of agony became the entire world for a few seconds. I guess being set on fire is kind of distracting. I fought the headlock with all of my strength and exploded out of it, drawing in a deep gasp of sweet, sweet air.

Which, instead of turning into the words of an immediate spell, got locked into the helpless autonomic cycle of an oncoming sneeze.

Of all the times, stupid conjuritis, now!?

Mavra thrashed out with one arm, hit me in the back, and clubbed me ten feet. Only the protective spells on my duster kept me from getting broken bones. I got my arms between my skull and the oncoming tombstone or I would have checked out right then and there, bounced, and hit the ground.

I focused, bringing power and image to my thoughts, rapidly gathering energy to put behind the oncoming sneeze.

The unwounded twin whirled her head toward me and hissed.

My chest convulsed into a sneeze that might have torn some muscles somewhere.

I sent power and image out along with it.

And an anvil, black and funny-shaped and half as long as a freaking car, plunged out of the night air and right onto the back half of Tentacles Guy’s noggin.

The plummeting anvil had to have weighed at least a ton.