Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,5

don't want to hear this." She started singing to herself again, low and desperateno enchantment to it this time, no unconscious act of destruction. But the infant girl still hadn't inhaled, and her lips were turning blue.

"Listen to me, Agatha," I said, forcing more of my will into my voice, lacing it with magic so that the ghost could hear me. "I know about you. You died. You remember. Your husband beat you. You were terrified that he would beat your daughter. And when she started crying, you covered her mouth with your hand." I felt like such a bastard to be going over the woman's past so coldly. Ghost or not, the pain on her face was real.

"I didn't," Agatha wailed. "I didn't hurt her."

"You didn't mean to hurt her," I said, drawing on the information Bob had provided. "But he was drunk and you were terrified, and when you looked down she was gone. Isn't that right?" I licked my lips, and looked at the infant girl again. If I didn't get this done quickly, she'd die. It was eerie, how still she was, like a little rubber doll.

Something, some spark of memory caught a flame in the ghost's eyes. "I remember," she hissed. "The axe. The axe, the axe, the axe." The proportions of the ghost's face changed, stretched, became more bony, more slender. "I took my axe, my axe, my axe and gave my Benson twenty whacks." The spirit grew, expanding, and a ghostly wind rustled through the room, emanating from the ghost, and rife with the smell of iron and blood.

"Oh, crap," I muttered, and gathered myself to make a dash for the girl.

"My angel gone," screamed the ghost. "Benson gone. And then the hand, the hand that killed them both." She lifted the stump of her arm into the air. "Gone, gone, gone!" She threw back her head and screamed, and it came out as a deafening, bestial roar that rattled the nursery walls.

I threw myself forward, toward the breathless child, and as I did the rest of the infants burst into terrified wails. I reached the child and smacked her little upturned baby butt. She blinked her eyes open in sudden shock, drew in a breath, and joined the rest of her nursery mates in crying.

"No," Agatha screamed, "no, no, no! He'll hear you! He'll hear you!" The stump of her left arm flashed out toward me, and I felt the impact both against my body and against my soul, as though she had driven a chip of ice deep into my chest. The power of the blow flung me back against a wall like a toy, hard enough to send my staff and rod clattering to the floor. By some miracle or other, I kept hold of my sack of ghost dust, but my head vibrated like a hammer-struck bell, and cold shivers wracked my body in rapid succession.

"Michael," I wheezed, as loudly as I could, but already I could hear doors being thrown open, heavy work boots pounding toward me. I struggled to my feet and shook my head to clear it. The wind rose to gale force, sending cribs skittering around the room on their little wheels, tearing at my eyes so that I had to shield them with one hand. Dammit. The dust would be useless in such a gale.

"Hush little baby, hush little baby, hush little baby." Agatha's ghost bowed over the infant girl's cradle again, and thrust the stump of her left arm down and into the mouth of the child, her translucent flesh passing seamlessly into the infant's skin. The child jerked and stopped breathing, though she still attempted to cry.

I shouted a wordless challenge and charged the spirit. If I could not cast the dust upon her from across the room, I could thrust the leather bag into her ghostly flesh and pin her into place from withinagonizing, but undoubtedly effective.

Agatha's head whipped toward me as I came, and she jerked away from the child with a snarl. Her hair had come free in the gale and spread about her face in a ferocious mane well suited to the feral features that had replaced her gentle expression. She drew back her left hand, and there suddenly appeared, floating just above the stump, a short, heavy-headed hatchet. She shrieked and brought the hatched down at me.

Ghostly steel chimed on true iron, and Amoracchius's light flared bright-white. Michael slid his feet into position on the floor, gritting