White Night (The Dresden Files #9) - Jim Butcher Page 0,33

puff," I muttered. I drew up my will, took the staff in both hands, and pressed one end slowly toward the door. "Solvos," I murmured. "Solvos. Solvos."

As the staff touched the door, I sent a gentle surge of will coursing down through its length. It passed through the wood visibly, the carved runes in it briefly illuminated from within by pale blue light. My will hit Anna's door and scattered out in a cloud of pinprick?; sparkles of white light as my power unbound the patterns of the ward and reduced them to mere anarchy.

"Anna?" I called again. "Ms. Ash?"

No answer.

I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

"That can't be good," I told Mouse. "Here we go." I quietly opened the door, giving it a gentle push so that it would swing wide and let me see inside the darkened apartment.

At which point the trap sprang.

For traps to work, though, they need to catch their target off guard. I had my new and improved shield bracelet ready when greenish light flashed in the dark apartment and rushed swiftly toward me. I lifted my left hand. Bound around my wrist was a chain made of braided strands of several metals, silver predominant. The metal shields that hung from the bracelet had, in its previous incarnation, been solid silver as well. They had been replaced with shields of silver, iron, copper, nickel, and brass.

The new shield wasn't like the old one. The old one had provided an intangible barrier meant to deflect solid matter and kinetic energy. It hadn't been made to stop, for example, heat. That's how my left hand got roasted practically down to the bones. It had been of only limited use against other forms of magic or energy. If there hadn't been a war on, and if I hadn't been spending so much time drilling Molly in the fundamentals—and therefore getting in all kinds of extra practice, myself—I would never have considered attempting to create such a complex focus. It was far more complicated than almost anything I'd done before. Five years ago, it would have been beyond me completely. More to the point, five years ago, I wouldn't have been as experienced or as strongly motivated.

But that was then, and this was now.

The shield that formed in front of me was not the familiar, translucent part-dome of pale blue light. Instead it flared into place in a blurring swirl of colors that solidified in an instant into a curving rampart of silver energy. The new shield was far more thorough than the old. Not only would it stop everything the old one had, but it would provide shelter against heat, cold, electricity—even sound and light, if I needed it to. It had also been designed to turn aside a fairly broad spectrum of supernatural energies. It was this last that was important at the moment.

A globe of green lightning sizzled over the apartment's threshold and abruptly expanded, buzzing arcs of verdant electricity interconnected in a diamond pattern like the weave of a fisherman's net.

The spell fell on my shield and the meeting of energies yielded a torrent of angry yellow sparks that rebounded from the shield, scattering over the hall, the doorway, and bouncing back into the apartment.

I dropped the shield as I brandished my staff, sent a savage torrent of power down my arm, and snarled, "Forzare!"

Unseen force lashed through the doorway—and splashed against the apartment's threshold. Most of the spell's power struck that barrier, grounded out, and was dissipated. What amounted to less than a percent of the power I had cast out actually made it through the doorway, as I had known it would. Instead of delivering a surge of energy strong enough to flip over a car, I delivered only a blow strong enough to knock an adult from her feet.

I heard a woman's voice let out a surprised grunt at the impact, and heavy objects clattered to the floor.

"Mouse!" I shouted.

The big dog bounded forward through the doorway, and I went in right behind him. Once again, the apartment's threshold stripped away my power, leaving me all but utterly unable to wield magic.

Which is why I'd brought my .44 revolver with me, tucked into a duster pocket. I had it in my left hand as I came through the door and hit the main light switch with my right elbow, bellowing, "I have not had a very good day!"

Mouse had someone pinned on the ground, and kept them there by virtue of simply