Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,59

a while.”

“Mmmmm,” River Shoulders rumbled. “Probably smart.”

My eyes adjusted enough to make out dim shapes, and I said, “All right, folks. Let’s get a move on.”

The hound ran forward and leapt into the air, and a hawk soared away.

Man. I needed to learn how to do stuff like that one of these days.

“All right,” I said, “we—”

River Shoulders scooped me up in his other arm and bounded forward.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been scooped up by a Sasquatch or not, but it isn’t the sort of thing you forget. I’m a pretty big guy. River lifted me as if I were a toddler. And when he ran . . .

It wasn’t running, really, in any typical sense. It was more like a series of alternating single-leg broad jumps, covering thirty feet at a stride. River went from zero to maybe fifty miles an hour in three steps, and damned near gave me whiplash doing it.

The gunfire swelled rapidly as we reached Montrose and Clarendon.

On the left side of Montrose was a large art deco office building, shining glass and steel. The first two levels of the structure were an open-sided parking garage. The Einherjaren had taken it and gunfire roared out of the garage on both levels, flashes of light and bursts of thunder, all directed toward Clarendon Park. On the right side of the street was another office building, nearly the size of its opposite, and I could see teams on the roof firing big, big single rounds down toward the park with those huge sniper rifles Barrett makes.

Shadow and motion filled the park. Huntsmen and octokongs rushed forward in swift dashes—faster than any human could have done it. The city’s defenders concentrated their fire on the Huntsmen, and with good reason—there were several large holes blown in the low walls of the parking garage, and ugly scorched remains were visible. Assault rifles did an excellent job on the first several Huntsmen of any given pack—but by the time the last few of them had gone all Hulk, it was up to the Barretts.

The octokongs weren’t as much of a threat—until they got closer. The ape-squid things had the upper body of a gorilla mounted on the lower chassis of an octopus, hence octokong. Good thing they hadn’t used chimps, or I’d have had to call them octopongs. And that just sounds silly.

The octokongs could slither along the ground at great speed, and when they climbed, tentacles flailing, they didn’t really slow down. Each bore a large, crude-looking weapon that made me think of those old blunderbusses, but they were fed by a magazine of some kind. The octokongs weren’t exactly snipers. They didn’t really aim. They just pointed the weapons in a general direction and pulled the trigger, sending out sprays of what must have been buckshot, if the chewed concrete around the parking garage was any indicator.

“Dresden!” River said sharply. The Sasquatch set me roughly on my feet and pointed.

I looked. The building on the south side of the street, where the Einherjaren snipers were set up, was mostly shrouded in darkness, but I could see well enough to glimpse the shapes of dozens of octokongs that had somehow circled the brick building and were climbing toward the roof, from the rear side, their tentacles probably leaving giant sucker marks on all the windows.

“Think you can handle them?” I asked him.

River set Ramirez down more carefully, his dark eyes just a ferocious gleam beneath his heavy brows, and bounded off in that direction, vanishing behind a veil as he went. A minute later, something grabbed one of the lowest octokongs, whirled it in a circle, and smashed it like a water balloon against the ground. I could see the blur of a form as it leapt a good fifteen feet up the side of the building, and dust exploded from the bricks, presumably from River Shoulders digging his fingers into them to get a good grip. He started climbing the building, seizing octokongs from behind and either smashing their skulls against the bricks or simply throwing them off and letting them fall to an ugly death.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.

“Hoss!” shouted Ebenezar’s voice.

I turned to see my grandfather on the second level of the parking garage, waving at me. He beckoned, and I held up a fist in acknowledgment.

“Can you move?” I asked Carlos.

The young Warden gave me a sour look and started limping along at his best pace, clutching his broken arm