Changes (The Dresden Files #12) - Jim Butcher Page 0,167
the temple with the Red King step forward. A gun went off, and then someone screamed. I heard a bellow, and looked up to see my friends and my godmother facing the masked Lords of Outer Night. Sanya was on his feet but motionless, grimly clutching Esperacchius in both hands. Murphy was on one knee and had dropped her P-90. One hand was moving slowly, determinedly toward the sword on her back. Martin was on the ground.
I couldn’t see any of the others. I couldn’t turn my head far enough. But nobody was up to fighting. None of us could move beneath the horrible pressure of will of the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.
“Insolent beast,” snarled the Red King. “Die in agony.” He seized another guard by his jaguar skin and jerked him close, as if the brawny vampire had been a child. “Need I repeat myself?” he seethed, and shoved his bloodstained ritual knife into the warrior’s hands. “Place that child upon the altar and kill her.”
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Guys like the Red King just don’t know when to shut up.
I fought to raise my hand, and it was more effort than anything I’d done that night. My hand shook and shook harder, but finally moved six inches, to touch the surface of the skull in the cloth bag on my hips.
Bob! I screamed, purely in my head, as I would have using Ebenezar’s sending stone.
Hell’s bells, he replied. You don’t have to scream. I’m right here.
I need a shield. Something to ward off his will. I figure this is a spiritual attack. A spirit should be able to counter it.
Oh, sure. But no can do from in here, boss, Bob said.
You have my permission to leave the skull for this purpose! I thought desperately.
The skull’s eye sockets flared with orange-red light, and then a cloud of glowing energy flooded out of the eyes and rose, gathering above my head and casting warm light down around me.
Seconds later, I heard Bob thinking, Take this, shorty!
And suddenly the Red King’s will was not enough to keep me down. The pain receded, smothered and numbed by an exhilarating, icy chill that left my nerves tingling with energy. I clenched my teeth, freed from the burden of pain, and thrust my own will against his. I was a child arm wrestling a weight lifter—but his last remark gave me some extra measure of strength, and suddenly I drove myself to my feet.
The Red King turned to face me fully again, and extended both hands toward me, his face twisting with rage and contempt. The horrible pressure began to swell and redouble. I heard his voice quite clearly when he said, “Bow. Down. Mortal.”
I took one dragging step toward my friends. Then another. And another. And another, moving forward with increasing steadiness. Then I snarled through clenched teeth and said, “Bite. Me. Asshole.”
And I put my hand on Murphy’s left shoulder.
She’d already moved her hand halfway to the sword. As I touched her, touched our auras together, spreading my own defenses over hers, and felt the direct and violent strength of her own will to defy the immortal power brought against us, her hand flashed up to the hilt of Fidelacchius and drew the katana from its plain scabbard.
White light like nothing that ancient stadium had ever seen erupted from the sword’s blade, a bright agony that reminded me intensely of the crystalline plain. Howls of pain rose from around us, but were drowned by Murphy’s sudden, silvery cry, her voice swelling throughout the stadium and ringing off the vaults of the sky:
“False gods!” she cried, her blue eyes blazing as she stared at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night. “Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty!”
I think I was the only one close enough to see the shock in her eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t Murphy speaking the words—but someone else speaking them through her.
Then she swept her sword in an arc, slashing the very air in front of us in a single, whistling stroke.
And the will of the Red King vanished. Gone.
The Red King let out a scream and clutched at his eyes. He screamed something, pointing in Murphy’s direction, and in the same instant the rest of my friends gasped and rocked in place, suddenly free.