Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,66

her coat pocket for a second. “My bike is old enough not to care much about magic, and our radios at command and control are shielded, but the field units aren’t lasting long.” She took a battery out of her other pocket and started popping it into the unit.

“I told you,” Butters said. He shrugged out of a backpack that he’d been wearing under the cloak. “They don’t have enough vacuum tubes.”

“We can’t stay here,” Sanya said, nodding to the corpses of the octokongs and the Fomor.

Even as he did, I saw one of the dead octokong’s wounds begin to . . . bubble. Its dark blood began to boil up out of the wounds with little hissing sounds, and a stench, dizzying in its intensity, began to fill the air of the ramp. The corpse actually quivered with the intensity of the chemical reaction, bits of flesh liquefying and sloughing off.

Murphy nodded, her nose wrinkling, and said to me, “Can you walk?”

“Kind of,” I said. My leg muscles tightened when I told them to, but when I tried to stand on it, the limb still buckled limply.

She nodded and said, “Get on the bike. We can’t stay here. CPD is bringing everyone they can get to the heart of the Loop and trying to evacuate.”

I got to my feet and staggered to the Harley. I swung my hurt leg over in a burst of tactile white noise, and Murphy turned the bike around toward the exit on the back side of the parking garage, opposite the lake.

“Just curious. How long did you stay at Mac’s?” I asked.

“Long enough to get everyone organized,” she said. “There’s no point discussing things with you once you get all chivalrous.”

I opened my mouth in annoyance and then closed it again. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said.

“Yeah, well, tough.”

I leaned my chin down onto her hair and closed my eyes. I felt her weight shift as she pressed her shoulder blades against my ribs. It was just for a moment, and for that moment I let myself feel. Intense relief at seeing her well. Intense fear at knowing that she was in danger. And pain. Loss. Terror. Confusion. Bewilderment. For a moment, I struggled against the sense that what was happening, all around me, could not be happening, could not be real.

But it was real.

Karrin found my hand and squeezed, hard.

I leaned my cheek against her hair and whispered, “Yoshimo and Wild Bill are dead. Probably Chandler, too. Black Court. And I don’t know if Ramirez or my grandfather made it out of the garage.”

She let out a breath and whispered back, “Oh, Harry.”

My stomach quivered. My eyes burned with tears that could not be given form if I was to hold it together. Which I had to do. There was no time to break down, no time for tears.

War leaves you precious little time to be human. It’s one of the more horrible realities about it.

I nodded, just enough so that she could feel my chin move, and the moment was over.

The four wolves loped easily forward, two taking places on our flanks, and two more ghosting silently out ahead of us, and Sanya and Butters came trotting along behind, keeping the pace, while I worked on preventing my hurt leg from just bouncing along the ground. It was recovering from the blow, stunned muscles sluggishly regaining sensibility, but for the moment I was pretty gimpy.

There was no way to ride the Harley at proper speed, not with all the dead cars as obstacles. I was surprised the thing kept on rumbling at all. Murphy rolled us slowly and carefully through the parking garage and didn’t ease out of the building until one of the wolves appeared from the haze ahead of us, evidently signaling the all clear.

“Harry,” called Butters from behind me.

I turned my head and took the backpack he offered me. It was light.

He nodded at the pack, grinning.

I opened it.

Inside was a human skull, bleached and ancient and battered—and an old friend.

The skull’s empty eye sockets suddenly flooded with light the color of campfire embers, and the thing shook as though awakening from a sleep. Bob had been my assistant for most of my adult life. “Oh, hey there, Harry! Long time no see!”

“Bob!” I said. Despite everything that had happened, I grinned. “How the hell are you?”

“Terrified!” Bob piped up. “How’s about we all pick a direction and run?”

“No can do,” I said. “I’m working. What the hell is