Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,8
of the dock was suddenly coated in ice. Molly stepped up out of the lake on the icy stairs she’d created, patterns of frost forming in her wet hair. She studied the city as she came, her eyes distant.
I lowered the boarding plank and shambled down to join her on the dock. “What do you see?” I asked quietly.
“Spirits,” she said. “Messengers, I think. Hundreds of them.”
“Martha Liberty,” I said. “She’s in tight with the loa. She’ll have them watching for the Fomor.”
“More than that,” she murmured. “Angels of death . . .” Molly stared sightlessly toward the city for a long moment in cat-eyed silence. Then she shivered.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We should get moving,” she said. “We need to get back to the castle.”
I eyed her. Her face was blank, distant.
Lara Raith strode out onto the deck of the Water Beetle. The battle had done for her change of clothing. She’d had to make do with some of Thomas’s stuff, stored in the ship’s cabin—leather-look tights and a big white Byronic poet’s shirt. My brother was not above embracing the classic stereotypes. The pale skin of her arms, where I could see it, was covered with dark, vicious bruises and round, mostly closed wounds, courtesy of the kraken.
Lara noticed me looking. “Not one quip about hentai, Dresden.” She glanced at Molly and nodded. “Thank you for the assistance.”
“It is no more than is due you under the mutual defense stipulations of the Accords,” Molly replied in a rather frosty tone.
Lara stared at Molly carefully for a moment before inclining her head. “Ah. Of course.”
Something like real anger flickered over Molly’s face for a second and then was gone.
I glanced back and forth between them.
I hate it when I miss things.
“We need to coordinate with the rest of the Accorded nations immediately,” Lara said to Molly.
“I concur.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You guys do that. There’s something I have to do first.”
Lara blinked. “As I understand it, Dresden, you may have a role to play tonight. And you have seen to it that I have an additional vested interest that you survive to do so. That being the case, I will not countenance you traipsing around the city alone.”
This could get complicated. Lara had already used two of the favors owed her by the Winter Court, but apparently, she had one remaining on credit with Mab. If she cashed it in, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop myself from cooperating.
I liked it way better when I could just be openly defiant, rather than being forced to resort to reason.
“Hey,” I said, “do you hear that?”
Lara cocked her head. “Hear what?”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s quiet. Barely after midnight. There’s time.”
“Time for what?” she demanded.
“To warn them,” I said. “The community in Chicago. Someone has to let them know what’s going on. Take me half an hour. Don’t bother arguing.”
Lara’s expression flickered with exasperation and her jawline twitched. “Empty night, Dresden. Why must you make everything more complicated?”
“It’s kind of my best feature,” I said.
“It should be done,” Molly observed, her tone remote. “If you will excuse me, there is something that requires my immediate attention.”
She took a step forward and vanished into a curtain of cold wind and mist that whipped about her and then dispersed, leaving only empty dock in its wake. I blinked and tried to look as if that was something I had been expecting to happen for at least ten minutes.
Lara shook her head. “I won’t try to stop you from fulfilling an obligation of Winter, if that’s what this is,” she said.
Ah. On her way out, Molly had set up cover for me. “That’s as easy a way to explain it as any,” I said.
“I need you alive if I’m to save my brother. I would feel better if you weren’t going alone.”
There were footsteps on the gangplank and Murphy said, “He isn’t.”
I looked up to see Murph in her tactical gear. If you didn’t know what to look for, you almost couldn’t tell she’d been crippled, when she was standing still like that.
“I don’t doubt your loyalty to him, Ms. Murphy,” Lara said. “Only your current limits. Time is critical. He needs to move.”
“She’s not going to slow me down,” I said. “You and Freydis should hit the castle. Riley was assembling your people when we left. They’ll need you.”
“Very well,” she said. “But don’t waste time. The Fomor could appear at any moment.”