White Night (The Dresden Files #9) - Jim Butcher Page 0,136

the cavern floor. Then I released my gathered will, focused by my intentions and the energies aligned in my staff, and shouted, "Aparturum!" Furious golden and scarlet light flowed down the length of wood, searing a seam in reality. I drew the staff from left to right, drawing a line of fire in the air—and after a heartbeat, that line expanded, burning up like a fire running up a curtain, down like rain sluicing down a car window, and left behind it a gateway, an opening from the Raith Deeps to the Nevernever.

The gate opened on a cold and frozen woodland scene. Silvery moonlight slipped through, and a freezing wind gusted, blowing powdery white snow into the cavern—substance of the spirit world, which transformed into clear, if chilly, gelatin, the ectoplasm left behind when spirit matter reverted to its natural state.

There was a stir of shadows, and then my brother burst through the opening, saber in one hand, sawed-off shotgun in the other. Thomas was dressed in heavy biker leather and body armor, with honest-to-God chain mail covering the biker's jacket. His hair was tied back in a tail, and his eyes were blazing with excitement. "Harry!"

"Take your time," I barked back at him. "We're not in a crisis or anything!"

"The others are right beh— Look out !"

I spun in time to see one of the ghouls bound into the air and sail toward me, the claws on both its hands and feet extended to rip and slash.

Ramirez shouted and flung one of his green blasts at the thing. It caught the ghoul at the apex of its flight and simply bored a hole the size of a garbage can in its lower abdomen.

The ghoul landed in a splatter of gore and fury. It kept fighting, though its legs flopped around like a seal's tail, of almost no use to it.

I sprang back—or at least, I tried to spring. Opening a gate to the Nevernever is not complicated, but it isn't easy, either, and between that and all the fighting I'd done, I was beginning to bump up against my physical limits. My legs wobbled, and my spring was more like the lazy, hot, and motionless end of summer.

Thomas dragged me the last six inches or I wouldn't have avoided the ghoul's claws. He extended his arm, shotgun in hand, and blew the ghoul's head off its shoulders in a spray of flying bits of bone and horn and a mist of horrible black blood.

After which, the ghoul seized him with one arm and began raking its talons at him with the other. The terrible power of the mangled ghoul was enormous. Links of chain mail snapped and went flying, and Thomas let out a scream of surprise and outrage.

"What the hell!" he snarled. He dropped the shotgun and took off the ghoul's attacking arm with his saber. Then he broke the grip of the last clawed hand, and flung the ghoul's body away from him.

"What the hell was that ?" he gasped, recovering the shotgun.

"Uh," I said. "That was one."

"Harry!" Ramirez said, backpedaling as best he could with the wounded leg, and bumped into me. I steadied him before he lost his balance. That damned knife was still sticking out of his calf.

A dozen more ghouls were charging us.

Everything slowed down, the way it sometimes does when fresh adrenaline shifts me into overdrive.

The cavern had gone insane. The ghouls had been there for maybe thirty seconds, but there were several dozen of them at least, with more pouring out of the neat oval gate on the other side of the cavern. The ghouls had apparently attacked everyone with equal amounts of ferocity and fury. More of them had poured into the Malvoran and Skavis contingent than the Raith side, but that might have been a function of simple numbers and proximity.

The vampires, most of them unarmed and unprepared for a fight, had been taken off guard. That doesn't mean as much to vamps as it does to regular folks, but the walls had been splattered with pale blood where the ghouls had rushed in among them, and the battle now raging was horrific.

In one spot, Lady Malvora ripped the arm from a ghoul's socket, her skin gone marble-white and hard-looking, and proceeded to beat it about the head and shoulders with its own detached limb. The ghoul went down with a shattered skull, but four more of the creatures buried the White Court noblewoman under their weight and power,