Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,80

flee—only to confront the Rawhead coming out of the alley. The fae beast, made of the bones of slaughtered animals and foes, was an enormous form under a great black cloak. The cloak flared out, and the bulky body of the Rawhead, made of hundreds of sharpened bones, began to contort and shriek in a sound uncomfortably like that of a meat grinder.

The Rawhead seized the Huntsman and dragged it beneath its cloak. Its bones rent and tore, where I couldn’t see it, and the Huntsman screamed in fury. And then there was a lot of blood and sausage tumbling out from beneath the Rawhead’s cloak and piling up on the Huntsman’s feet and lower legs.

The last Huntsman roared, rearing up in size—and the second-largest malk I’d ever seen, the size of a mountain lion but far bulkier, flew like an arrow for the creature’s face. Grimalkin’s forepaws spread out to snowshoe proportions and sprouted two-inch claws that latched into the Huntsman’s face. The Elder malk sank its jaws into one of the Huntsman’s eyes, gripping on like a vise to the orbital bone beneath—and thus braced, the supernaturally powerful, swift cat began to rake with its rear claws.

In less than a second, the last Huntsman’s throat looked like twenty or thirty pounds of pulled pork soaked in ketchup.

The Elder malk flung himself aside as the Huntsman, not even yet fully grown into the size of the ones we’d had to kill, dropped limply to the ground, gushing blood like a broken water main. Grimalkin landed not ten feet in front of the Harley, flicked each set of claws once, fastidiously, and said, in that utterly unnerving feline voice, “Sir Knight. Elder Grimalkin, reporting for duty.”

“Jesus Mary Mother of God,” Murphy breathed.

Grimalkin flattened his ears and gave Murphy a glower, then turned to me and said, “There are multiple warbands on the adjoining streets. My kin keep them occupied, for now. We are badly outnumbered, Sir Knight. Retreat would be ideal, before—”

The Jotun’s horn blared. In the haze and among the buildings, it was impossible to tell where it was, other than . . .

“Close,” Murphy breathed.

“Before that,” Grimalkin said sourly.

“Well done, Elder,” I said. “But we’re getting those kids out.”

The malk growled. “We cannot contest a Jotun, Sir Knight.”

“Pussy,” Murphy said.

I blinked at her.

She smirked. “Too good, couldn’t resist.”

Grimalkin’s fur bristled and his weight shifted slightly.

Without breaking her smirk, Murphy swept her pistol out and covered the malk as quick as blinking. “Steel-jacketed rounds tonight, friend,” she advised. “Play nice.”

Grimalkin growled at Murphy, eyed me, then relaxed as if nothing had happened. He flexed the claws out of his right forepaw and regarded them idly, ignoring Murphy completely.

She put the gun away and returned the favor. But she never quite let the malk out of her sight.

They’d get on fine.

I swung off the bike. Murphy followed. I beckoned Butters and the Alphas. “We’re getting those kids out first,” I said, walking. “Grimalkin, you and Winter keep a corridor open for us, back to the defenses.”

“We cannot hold it long,” Grimalkin warned me.

“Do it,” I said over my shoulder. “Go.”

The Elder malk made a throaty, ugly sound and vanished before it could even complete turning away.

I came up on the entry to the day-care center stairwwell to find Bradley gripping his spear and standing braced in the doorway, his eyes very, very wide. The spear was already degrading and flaking away. It’d be gone in a few more minutes.

“Hey, Detective Bradley. It’s, uh, me. Harry Dresden. Remember?”

The blocky man stared at me. Then he jerked his head in a nod.

“Murph,” I said.

She stepped past me, her hands out. “Hey, hey. Brian. You with me, buddy?”

Bradley stared at her for a second and then lowered the spear a little. “We aren’t buddies, Sergeant. You kind of hate my guts.”

Murphy looked from the liquefying forms of the slain Huntsmen to Bradley. “That was then. This is now.”

He blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?” He twitched as the wolves and Butters brought up the rear. “What the hell is happening?”

“Hi,” Butters said, and waved.

“Hi?” said Bradley. He blinked. “Doctor Butters?”

“You know all that stuff I told you in closed session that you thought was bullshit?” Murphy asked.

“And all that stuff I told you in closed session that you thought was bullshit?” Butters added brightly.

The blocky detective looked from the dead Huntsmen and the fallen fae back to Murphy and Butters. “Jesus Christ.”

Bradley handled it pretty well. He got a little whiter