Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,141

me. Keep your eyes open."

"Yes, sir," she said, her voice quiet. I strode past her, toward the stairs. Some of the energy I'd felt before had faded away. My pain and weakness grew closer to me, more noticeable. I did everything I could to shove it to the back of my mind. A swift little thrill of panic gabbled in my throat and tried to make me start screaming. I shoved that away, too. I just walked to the bottom of the stairs, and looked up them.

The doors at the top were elegant wood, and standing open. A soft breeze and the smell of night air flowed down the stairs. Late night, faint with the traces of dusty dawn. I glanced back at Justine, and she all but flinched away from me.

"Stay down here," I told her. "Bob, some things are going to start flying. Give her whatever help you can."

"All right, Harry," Bob said. "You know that door's been opened for you. They're going to be waiting for you to walk up there."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm not getting any stronger. Might as well do it now."

"You could wait until dawn. Then they'd"

I cut him off, short. "Then they'd force their way down here to escape the sunlight. And it would still be a fight." I glanced at Justine and said, "I'll get you out, if I can."

She chanced a swift glance at my face, and back down. "Thank you, Mister Dresden. For trying."

"Sure, kid." I flexed my left hand, feeling the cool silver of the shield bracelet there. I gripped my staff tight. Then rolled the blasting rod through my fingers, feeling the runes carved into the wood, formulae of power, fire, force.

I put one foot on the stairs. My bare foot made little sound, but the board creaked beneath my weight. I squared my shoulders, and went up the next stair, and the next. Resolute, I guess. Terrified, certainly. Seething with power, with a simmering anger ready to boil over again.

I tried to clear my mind, to hang onto the anger and to dismiss the fear. I had limited success, but I made it up the stairs.

At the top, Bianca stood at one end of the great hall through the open doors. She wore the white gown I'd seen her in before, the soft fabric draping and stretching in alluring curves, creating shadows upon her with an artist's conviction. Susan knelt beside her, shaking, her head bowed. Bianca kept one hand on her hair.

Spread out around and behind Bianca were a dozen vampires; skinny limbs, flabby black bodies and drooling fangs, the flaps of skin between arm and flank and thigh stretched out, here and there, like half-functional wings. Some of the vampires had climbed up the walls and perched there, like gangly black spiders. All of them, even Susan, had huge, dark eyes. All of them stood looking at me.

In front of Bianca knelt a half-dozen men in plain suits that bulged in odd places. They held guns in their hands. Great big guns. Some kind of assault weapons, I thought. Their eyes looked a little vague, like they'd only been allowed to see some of what was in the room. Just as well.

I looked back at them and leaned on my staff. And I laughed. It came out a wheezing cackle, that echoed around the great hall, and caused the vampires to stir restlessly.

Bianca let her lips curve into a slow smile. "And what do you find so amusing, my pet?"

I smiled back. There was nothing friendly in it. "All of this. For a guy with two sticks and a pair of yellow ducky boxer shorts, you must think I'm a real dangerous man."

"As a matter of fact, I do," Bianca said. "Were I you, I would consider it flattery."

"Would you?" I asked.

Bianca let her smile widen. "Oh. Oh, yes. Gentlemen," she said, to the men with guns. "Fire."

Chapter Thirty-eight

I lifted my left hand before me, pouring energy into the shield bracelet, and shouted, " Riflettum !"

The guns roared with fire and thunder. Sparks showered off of a barrier less than six inches away from my hand. The bracelet grew warm as the security men poured a hail of gunfire at me. It stopped, just short, and bullets shot aside, chewing through the expensive woodwork and bouncing wildly around the room. One of the vampires let out a yowl and dropped from the wall to splat on the ground like a fat bug. One of the