to you.
Ebenezar avoided my eyes. And he looked ashamed.
"There's work to be done, Ebenezar," I said in a measured tone. "I don't know what you know about Kincaid, but he knows his business. I asked him here. I need his help."
"Yes," Ebenezar agreed.
"I need yours too," I said. "Are you in?"
"Yes," he said. I thought I heard something like pain in his voice. "Of course."
"Then we move now. We talk later."
"Fine."
I nodded. Murphy had appeared at some point, now dressed in jeans, a dark shirt, and the Red Cross hat and jacket Kincaid had given her. She had her gun belt on, and she held herself a little differently, so I figured she had strapped on her Kevlar vest.
"All right," I said, stepping over to the van. "Ebenezar is going to shut down Mavra, or at least throw a wet blanket over anything she can do. You got everything you need, sir?"
Ebenezar grunted in the affirmative and patted a pair of old leather saddlebags he had tossed over his shoulder.
"Right," I said. "That means that our main problems should be the Renfields and their darkhounds. Guns and teeth. We'll want to get inside and down to the basement if we can. Then if bullets start flying, it should keep them from killing people upstairs and next door."
"What's the rest of the plan?" Kincaid asked.
"Kill the vampires, save the hostages," I said.
"For the record," Kincaid said, "I was hoping for an answer that vaguely hinted at a specific tactical doctrine rather than spouting off general campaign objectives."
I started to snap at him but reined in my temper. This wasn't the time for it. "You've done this the most," I said. "What do you suggest?"
Kincaid looked at me for a moment and then nodded. He glanced at Murphy and said, "Something in a Mossberg. Can you handle a shotgun?"
"Yeah," Murphy said. "These are close quarters, though. We'd need something heavy like that to stop a charge, but the barrel would need to be cut short."
Kincaid gave her a look, and said, "That would be an illegal weapon." Then he reached into the van and handed her a shotgun with a barrel that had been cut down to end just above the forward grip. Murphy snorted and checked out the shotgun while Kincaid rattled around in the white minivan again.
Instead of a second shotgun, though, he drew a weapon made of plain, nonreflective steel from the van. It was modeled after a boar spear of the Middle Ages, a shaft about five feet long with a cross-brace thrusting out on two sides at the base of the spear tip—a foot and a half of deadly, matte-black blade as wide as my hand at the base, and tapering down to a fine point at the tip. There was enough mass to the spear to make me think that he could as easily chop and slash with the edges of the spearhead as thrust with the tip. The butt end of the spear ended at some kind of bulbous-looking cap of metal, maybe just a counterweight. A similar double protrusion bulged out from the spear shaft at the base of the blade.
"Spear and magic helmet," I said in my best Elmer Fudd voice. "Be vewy, vewy quiet. We're hunting vampires."
Kincaid gave me the kind of smile that would make dogs break into nervous howls. "You got your stick ready there, Dresden?"
"You should go with a shotgun," Murphy told Kincaid.
Kincaid shook his head. "Can't shove the shotgun into a charging vampire or hellhound and hold them off with the cross-brace," he said. He settled the spear into his grip and did something to the handle. The beam of a flashlight clicked on from one side of the bulge at the base of the spearhead. He tapped the other one with a finger. "Besides, got incendiary rounds loaded zip-gun style in either end. If I need them, bang."
"In the butt end too?" I asked.
He reversed his grip on the spear and showed me the metal casing. "Pressure trigger on that one," he said. Kincaid dropped the spear's point down and held the haft close to his body, somehow managing to make the weapon look like a casual and appropriate accessory. "Shove it hard against the target and boom. Based it on the bang sticks those National Geographic guys made for diving with sharks."
I looked from the gadget-readied spear and body armor to my slender staff of plain old wood and leather duster.
"My dick is bigger than your