Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,145

their vengeance shook that grand old house like a thunderstorm, like an earthquake.

The ceiling began to fall in. I saw vampires being dragged into the flames, down into the basement as burning sections of floor gave way. Some tried to flee, but the spirits of the dead knew no more pity than they had rest. They hammered at the vampires, raked at them, ghostly hands and bodies made nearly tangible by the power I'd channeled into them.

Vampires died. Ghosts swarmed and screamed everywhere, terrible and beautiful, heartbreaking and ridiculous as humanity itself. The sound banished any thought of speech, hammered upon my skin like physical blows.

I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I struggled to my feet and beckoned down the stairs. Justine stumbled up them, Bob's eyelights blazing bright orange, a beacon in the smoke. I grabbed her wrist and tried to make my way around the trembling house, the gaping hole in the floor that led down to an inferno.

I saw a spirit leap for Bianca with blazing hands reached out, and she smote it from the air with a blast of frozen black air. She seized Susan by the wrist and started dragging her toward the front door.

More spirits hurtled toward her, the eldest of the murderers of this house, fire and smoke and splintereven one that had forged a body for itself out of the spent bullets laying upon the floor.

She fought them off. Talon and magic, she thrust her way through them, and toward the front door. Susan began to wake up, to look around her, her expression terrified.

"Susan!" I shouted. "Susan!"

She began to struggle against Bianca, who hissed, turning toward Susan. She fought to drag my girlfriend closer to the front door, but one of the ghosts clawed at the vampire's leg, setting it aflame.

Bianca screamed, berserk, out of control. She lifted one hand high, her claws glittering, dark, and swept it down at Susan's throat.

I sent my spell hurtling out along with Susan's name, the last strength of my body and mind.

I saw her rise. Rachel's ghost. She appeared, simple and translucent and pretty, and put herself between Bianca's claws and Susan's throat. Blood gouted from the ghost, scarlet and horrible. Susan tumbled limply to one side. Bianca started screaming, high enough to shatter glass, as the bloody ghost simply pressed against her, wrapping her arms around the monstrous black form.

My spell followed on the heels of Rachel's ghost, and took Bianca full in the face, a near-solid column of wind, which seized her, hurtled her up, and then smashed her down into the floor. The overstrained boards gave way beneath her with a creak and a roar, and flame washed up toward me in a wave of reeking black smoke. I felt my balance spin and I struggled to make it to the exit, but fell to the ground.

Spirits flooded after Bianca, fire and smoke, following the vampire sorceress down the hole. The house itself screamed, a sound of tortured wood and twisted beam, and began to fall.

I couldn't get my balance. I felt small, strong hands under one of my arms. And then I felt Susan beneath the other, powerful and terrified. She lifted me to my feet. Justine stayed by my other side, and together, we stumbled out of the old house.

We had gone no more than a dozen paces when it collapsed with a roar. We turned, and I saw the house drawing in upon itself, sucked down into the earth, into an inferno of flame. The fire department, later, called it some kind of inverted backblast, but I know what I saw. I saw the ghosts the dead had left behind settle the score.

"I love you," I said, or tried to say, to Susan. "I love you."

She pressed her mouth to mine. I think she was crying. "Hush," she said. "Harry. Hush. I love you, too."

It was done.

There was no more reason to hold on.

Chapter Thirty-nine

I regard it as one last sadistic gibe of whatever power had decided to make my life a living hell that the burn ward was full, and I was given a room to share with Charity Carpenter. She had recovered in spirit, if not in body, and she started in on me the moment I awoke. The woman's tongue was sharper than any sword. Even Amoracchius . I smiled through most of it. Michael would have been proud.

The baby, I learned, had taken an abrupt turn for the