that horrible pain eased—not much, but enough to let me suddenly move my arms and my head, enough to know that I could act.
So I froze in place.
"Mine!" howled a voice, so distorted with lust and violence that it sounded like nothing human. "She is mine!"
Footsteps came closer, thump-drag, thump-drag. I saw Vittorio's horribly burned leg go by in my peripheral vision. The sensation of shade began to fade at the edges, with the power of Vittorio's spell returning by slow degrees, like sunlight beginning to burn its way through a sheet of frosted glass.
"Little Raith bitch," Vittorio snarled. "What I do to you will make your father's blood run cold."
There was the sound of a heavy blow. I twitched my head a tiny bit to one side to get a look at what was around me.
A lot of really huge ghouls, that was what, apparently no less fierce for being battered and torn by the battle. Vittorio stood over Lara, his face pale, his leg horribly burned. He had his right hand held out, the hand that projects energy, fingers spread, and I could still feel the terrible power radiating from them. He was maintaining the pressure of the spell that held everyone down, then—and I could see, from the reaction of the ghouls around him, that they were feeling the bite of the spell, too. It seemed only to make them flinch and cower a little, rather than incapacitating them entirely. Maybe they were more used to feeling such things.
He kicked Lara in the ribs, twice more, heavy and ugly kicks that cracked bones. Lara let out little sounds of pain, and I think it was that, more than anything, that let me push the paralyzing awl of hostile magic completely away from my mind. I moved one hand, and that slowly. From the lack of outcry, I took it that no one noticed.
"We'll put a pin in this, for now, little Raith bitch." He whirled toward my brother. "I had intended to find you, you know, Thomas," Vittorio continued. "An outcast like you, I assumed, might be inclined to throw in his lot with someone with a more equitable vision for the future. But you're like some sad dog, too ugly to be allowed into the house, but faithfully defending the master that holds him in contempt. Your end isn't going to be pretty, either." He started to turn toward me, smiling. "But first, we start with the busybody wizard." He finished the turn, saying, "Burns hurt, Dresden. Have I mentioned how much I hate being exposed to fire?"
No sense in wasting perfectly good irony. I waited until he said fire to spin and pull the trigger on Marcone's shotgun.
The weapon bucked hard—I hadn't had time to brace it properly—and slammed into my shoulder with bruising force only partly attenuated by my duster. The blast pretty well removed Vittorio's right hand at the middle of his forearm.
The way I hear it, amputation is bad for your concentration. It certainly wasn't good for Vittorio's, and you can't hold up the pressure on a spell like he'd been using without concentration. There was a sudden surge of particularly intense discomfort through the spell as Vittorio's physical trauma sent a flare of energy through it, like feedback on an enormous speaker. The ghouls howled in agonized reaction to the surge of discord, and it gave me a second or so to act.
I lashed out with both legs and got Vittorio in one of his knees—the one that wasn't all burned. A kick to the knees doesn't bother a vampire from the Red Court—their actual knees are all backward anyway. A Black Court vampire wouldn't have been anything but annoyed at having a hand blown off with a shotgun.
Vitto wasn't either.
When he wasn't drawing upon the power gained from his Hunger, he was pretty much human. And while I'm a wizard and all, I'm also a fairly big guy. Tall and skinny, sure, but when you get tall enough, even skinny guys are pretty darned heavy, and I've got strong legs. His knee bent in backward and he fell with a scream.
Before he could recover, I was up on one knee with the shotgun's stock against my shoulder and its long barrel against Vittorio's nose. "Back off!" I shouted. I was going for cool and strong, but my voice came out sounding angry and not overly burdened with sanity. "Tell them to back off! Now!"