Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,68

and found myself scowling. “How come she isn’t doing any of that for me, then?”

Bob gave me a disgusted look. “You’re the Winter freaking Knight. You get it all the time. Suck it up.”

Again the sky turned red. Again metal and concrete screamed and rumbled. There was too much dust in the sky now. I couldn’t see what had fallen—only the diffused glow of the power of the Eye and a slight thickening in the dusty cloud.

“Hell’s bells,” I complained. “How many shots does that thing have?”

“It’s being fueled by the city’s fear now, boss,” Bob said seriously. “It’ll run out when everyone’s dead. Which was the general idea, when it was created. That’s part of what Mab is trying to do, too. Dampen everyone’s fear. Rob the enemy of power.”

Butters leaned in to the conversation. “What happens if Mab keeps making things worse on the enemy?”

Bob let out a hysterical little cackle. “They go insane. I mean, obviously. It’s a psychic assault.”

Murphy gave me a sharp look. “So they have to stop her. If they don’t, they can’t meet their objective.”

“Good luck finding her,” I said.

Red light flashed again, staining the air with blood.

And, from the south, a sudden glaring column of blue light, so intense and bright that it could readily be seen even through the haze, erupted cold and defiant into the sultry night.

“Bozhe moi!” Sanya blurted, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. “Is that . . .”

I knew power from the heart of Winter when I saw it. “Mab. Yeah.” I thought furiously. “Crap.”

“What?” Butters asked.

“Murphy’s right,” I said. “They’ve got to shut her down. And she’s just told them where to find her.”

“She’s made herself bait,” Murphy said. “They’ll converge on her. From everywhere.”

“Yeah, they will,” I said, still thinking. “There’s no way they’d pass up a chance to . . .” Mab’s intent suddenly unfolded in my head. “Oh crap. We’ve got to turn south.”

Murphy took a deep breath. “You sure?”

“I’m sure it will be worse if we don’t,” I said. “Follow that skybeam.”

Chapter

Seventeen

We rode through pandemonium.

Pandemonium means “the place where all demons dwell.”

And the demons were out tonight.

After a couple of blocks, someone in my head hit the pause button on whatever VCR recording my memory kept of the event. Things got blurry. Only pieces remained. Cuttings of memory.

. . . buildings were on fire. Black smoke poured out of them. An old woman stood in the street in her nightgown, screaming hysterically.

. . . a group of men had gathered around a policeman and were kicking his guts out. Sanya and Butters plunged into them and scattered them like a flock of chickens. The cop was already dead, but it took his body a minute to catch on. We had to leave his remains there.

. . . a Catholic priest at the door of a packed church, explaining to a crowd that there was only room for children.

. . . a dead neighborhood where the Huntsmen had killed every man, woman, child, and pet. Had burned every plant and building. Destroyed every fire hydrant. Water two inches deep, most of it scarlet with spilled blood. Light and heat.

. . . a furtive group of men gathered around a beaten woman. The smell of propellant from Murphy’s gun. Bloody fangs. Butters vomiting. Sanya, his eyes cold.

. . . a lot of cops, terrified and trying. Fire department guys with hopeless faces. Grim, quiet EMTs doing desperate battle with the Reaper himself. A lot of civilians, hard-faced and armed and determined, standing shoulder to shoulder with officers: the fighters. Veterans. Bikers. Parents. There were fewer people on the street now—those who could flee had already done so. Those who remained were the invalids, those determined to fight—and the dead.

So many dead.

The Fomor had spared no one. Not women. Not the elderly. And not children.

. . . flashes of red light. The roar of destruction that followed. Always, those flashes coloring the whole of the haze and sky in bloody scarlet, but for where that single column of icy defiance remained.

. . . a crib on its side on the street, the interior stained red.

God.

I would have nightmares for years about that one image.

Somewhere, inside my head, I knew that the events now transpiring were of historic proportions. That they were driven by forces and circumstances far beyond the scope or control of any one individual.

But when I asked whose fault this was, I could see only myself in the dim mirrors of the