Storm Front - By Jim Butcher Page 0,63

yards away.

"I didn't think you'd last this long," someone said.

I almost jumped out of my skin. I picked my staff up in both hands and turned in a slow circle, searching for the source of the voice. "Who's there?" There, to one side, a spot of cold—not physical cold, but something deeper and darker that my other senses detected. A pooling of shadows, an illusion in the darkness between lights, gone when lightning flashed and back again when it had passed.

"Do you expect me to give you my name?" the shadows scorned. "Suffice to say that I am the one who has killed you."

"You're an underachiever," I shot back, still turning, eyes searching. "The job's not done."

In the darkness underneath a broken streetlight, then, maybe twenty feet away, I could make out the shape of a person. Man or woman, I couldn't tell, nor could I distinguish from the voice. "Soon," the shape said. "You can't last much longer. My demon will finish you before another ten minutes have passed." The voice was supremely confident.

"You called that demon here?"

"Indeed," the shadowy shape confirmed.

"Are you crazy?" I demanded, stunned. "Don't you know what could happen to you if that thing gets loose?"

"It won't," the shape assured me. "It is mine to control."

I extended my senses toward the shape, and found that what I had suspected was true. It wasn't a real person, or an illusion masking a real person. It was only the seeming of one, a phantasm of shape and sound, a hologram that could see and hear and speak for its creator, wherever he or she was.

"What are you doing?" it demanded. It must have sensed me feeling it out.

"Checking your credentials," I said, and sent some of my remaining will toward it, the sorcerous equivalent of a slap in the face.

The image cried out in surprise and reeled back. "How did you do that?" it snarled.

"I went to school."

The hologram growled, then raised up its voice, calling out in rolling syllables. I tried to hear what had been said, but another peal of thunder blocked out the middle half of what was undoubtedly the demon's name.

From within my apartment, the distant, faint sound of the demon's smashing ruckus came to an abrupt halt.

"Now," the image said, a sneer to its voice. "Now you will pay."

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.

"You're in my way."

"Let the woman go."

"Sorry," the image said. "She's seen too much. She's in the way, too, now. My demon will kill you both."

"You bastard," I snarled.

It laughed at me.

I looked over my shoulder, back toward the apartment. Through the rain I heard a dry and raspy hiss, underlaid with a sort of clicking growl. Blue frog-eyes, reflecting the storm's lightning, came up the stairs from my basement apartment. It focused on me immediately and started forward. The back fender of Susan's car, which she had parked outside my apartment, got in its way, and with the pad-tipped fingers of one skinny, soft-looking hand, it picked up the back end of the car and tossed it to one side, where it landed with a heavy crunch.

I tried not to think about those fingers around my throat.

"You see?" the image said. "Mine to call. Time for you to die, Mr. Dresden."

Another flash of lightning showed the demon falling to all fours and scrambling toward me like an overweight lizard scuttling across hot sand to shade, in an exaggerated wagging motion that looked ridiculous but brought it closer and closer at deceptive speed.

"Deposit another quarter to continue your call, asshole," I said. I thrust my staff toward the shadowy image, this time, focusing my will into a full-fledged attack. "Stregallum finitas."

Scarlet light abruptly flooded over it, devouring its edges and moving inward.

The image snarled, then gasped in pain. "Dresden! My demon will roll in your bones!" And then it broke off into a scream of anguish as my counterspell began to tear the image-sending apart. I was better than whoever had made the image, and they couldn't hold the spell in the face of my counter. The image and the scream alike faded slowly into the distance until both were gone. I allowed myself the smallest touch of satisfaction, and then turned to the woman on the ground.

"Susan," I said, crouching by her, keeping my eyes on the onrushing demon. "Susan, get up. We have to go."

"I can't," she sobbed. "Oh, God," and she threw up some more. She tried to rise but collapsed back to the ground,