Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,77

in.”

They did. I was tall enough for everyone to see. Hadn’t ever really occurred to me why everyone thought military leaders should be tall. It simply offered a small practical advantage, for much of humanity’s history.

They could see my face, my eyes. They could see me.

“This city has gone to hell in a handbasket,” I declared. “And then a bunch of monsters showed up.”

There was a rumble of nervous laughter. Chicagoans love their city, but they also have few illusions about how screwed up it can be. They live here.

“I know you’re scared,” I said. “I know you’ve all . . . seen things that nobody should have to see.” I pushed the image of that damned crib out of my head. “I know you don’t know who I am, and this is all weird. So, let me introduce myself. My name is Harry Dresden. I’m a wizard of the White Council. And I mean to fight to the death to defend this town.”

“What?” came an incredulous voice from the crowd. “You think you’re a what?”

I turned to that voice, identified the speaker through my link to the banner, and strode directly toward him. People got out of my way. He was a skinny guy, late thirties, holding a hunting rifle. He drew back half a pace, apprehensively, as I approached.

“What’s your name, man?” I asked.

“Uh . . . it’s Randy.”

“Okay, Randy. I’m only going to do this once.”

I dropped my staff on the ground, held up my hands in front of me, palms facing each other, drew in a whisper of will, and murmured, “Eggus Chennus.”

Green-gold lightning, not a ton of it, exploded from my palms, forming a current of energy that snapped and crackled in the sultry summer air, contained within the space between my hands.

I had thought through the spell before, but I’d never really tried it. It worked pretty well—except that rather than just going away, the power was cycling up one arm, around my shoulders, down the other arm, and then out between my hands again. It was a cycle that fed upon itself, and between that and the power-laden air of the terrified city, the energy built a whole hell of a lot faster than I would have liked. It had to go somewhere.

I picked a tree and unleashed a stroke of green lightning that smashed into the trunk about five feet up and brought the tree crashing down. It started burning with green flame, green flame—all hell was breaking loose. I could only attribute that to the breakdown in reality that Bob had warned me about.

My volunteers had fallen silent.

Randy looked like he’d swallowed multiple bugs.

“Wizard,” I reiterated. “Any questions?”

“Are you on our side?” Randy asked.

“If you’re here to defend the innocent, damned skippy I’m on your side,” I said. I grabbed his shoulder and squeezed a little. Then I turned to look at everyone else.

“The monsters are coming,” I said. “And they’ll kill everyone in this town if they can. Unless we kill them first.”

The crowd let out a sound that was a lot like a hungry growl.

I found myself smiling, more and more widely. Yeah, the world was full of monsters and demons. But it was a human world. It was our world because we were the cleverest, most resourceful, and most dangerous things in it. Maybe my little army wasn’t the most martial representation of humanity, but people fighting for their homes had, historically, done incredible things.

Time for history to repeat itself.

“Sanya, raise your hand.”

He did.

“This is Sanya. He’s a Knight. He fights monsters for a living and he knows what he’s talking about. Sanya is your commander. Sanya . . . hey, where the hell did you get a freaking Kalashnikov?”

Sanya shouldered his rifle by its strap, grinning. “Found it.”

I waved a hand at him. “Whatever. Take charge, man.”

“Da,” Sanya said, and raised his voice to a bellow. “Hello. First of all, da, I am Russian. Cope. Second, you see these men and women in uniforms? Easy to recognize even in haze, da? They are your officers. I will make groups of about thirty. Each group get one officer. Officer tell you what to do, you do it.”

Sanya turned to the uniformed men and women. “You guys get to give one of three orders. Stand, retreat, and follow me. Keep it simple. Communications in battle are hard, even for professionals.”

There was a round of nods. The military folks looked grim. They knew what a clusterfuck they were about to