by Jim Butcher
But as the naagloshii hurled agony and death in a futile effort to overcome Listens-to-Wind’s power, it was also striding forward, closing the distance between them, until it stood less than twenty feet from the old medicine man. Then its eyes glittered with a terrible joy, and with a roar it hurled itself physically upon the old man.
My heart leapt into my throat. Listens-to-Wind might not have come down on my side in this matter, but he had helped me more than once in the past, and was one of the few wizards to hold Ebenezar McCoy’s respect. He was a decent man, and I didn’t want to see him get hurt in my defense. I tried to cry out a warning, and as I did, I caught the look on his face as the naagloshii pounced.
Injun Joe was smiling a fierce, wolfish smile.
The naagloshii came down, its mouth stretching into a wolflike muzzle, extending claws on all four of its limbs as it prepared to savage the old man.
But Listens-to-Wind spoke a single word, his voice shaking the air with power, and then his form melted and shifted, changing as fluidly as if he’d been made of liquid mercury that until that moment had only been held in the shape of an old man by an effort of will. His form simply resolved itself into something different, as naturally and swiftly as taking a deep breath.
When the naagloshii came down, it didn’t sink its claws into a leathery old wizard.
Instead, it found itself muzzle to muzzle with a brown bear the size of a minibus.
The bear let out a bone-shaking roar and surged forward, overwhelming the naagloshii with raw mass and muscle power. If you’ve ever seen a furious beast like that in action, you know that it isn’t something that can be done justice in any kind of description. The volume of the roar, the surge of implacable muscle beneath heavy pelt, the flash of white fangs and glaring red-rimmed eyes combine into a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s terrifying, elemental, touching upon some ancient instinctual core inside every human alive that remembers that such things equal terror and death.
The naagloshii screamed, a weird and alien shriek, and raked furiously at the bear, but it had outsmarted itself. Its long, elegantly sharp claws, perfect for eviscerating soft-skinned humans, simply did not have the mass and power they needed to force their way through the bear’s thick pelt and the hide beneath, much less the depth to cut through layers of fat and heavy muscle. It might as well have strapped plastic combs to its limbs, for all the good its claws did it.
The bear seized the skinwalker’s skull in its vast jaws, and for a second, it looked like the fight was over. Then the naagloshii blurred, and where a vaguely simian creature had been an instant before, there was only a tiny flash of urine yellow fur, a long, lean creature like a ferret with oversized jaws. It wiggled free of the huge bear and evaded two slaps of its giant paws, letting out a defiant, mocking snarl as it slid free.
But Injun Joe wasn’t done yet, either. The bear lifted itself into a ponderous leap, and came down to earth again as a coyote, lean and swift, that raced after the ferret nimbly, fangs bright. It rushed after the fleeing ferret—which suddenly turned, jaws opening wide, and then wider, and wider, until an alligator coated in sparse tufts of yellow fur turned to meet the onrushing canine, which found itself too close to turn aside.
The canine form melted as it shot toward the alligator’s maw, and a dark-winged raven swept into the jaws and out the far side as they snapped shut. The raven turned its head and let out mocking caws of laughter as it flew away, circling around the clearing.
The alligator shuddered all over, and became a falcon, golden and swift, its head marked by tufts of yellowish fur that almost looked like the naagloshii’s ears had in its near-human form. It hurtled forward with supernatural speed, vanishing behind a veil as it flew.
I heard the raven’s wings beat overhead as it circled cautiously, looking for its enemy—and then was struck from behind by the falcon’s claws. I watched in horror as the hooked beak descended to rip at the captured raven—and met the spiny, rock-hard back of a snapping turtle. A leathery head twisted and jaws that could cut through medium-gauge wire clamped onto the naagloshii-falcon’s leg, and it let out another alien shriek of pain as the two went plummeting to the earth together.
But in the last few feet, the turtle shimmered into the form of a flying squirrel, limbs extended wide, and it converted some of its falling momentum into forward motion, dropping to a roll as it hit the ground. The falcon wasn’t so skilled. It began to change into something else, but struck the stony earth heavily before it could finish resolving into a new form.
The squirrel whirled, bounded, and became a mountain lion in midleap, landing on the stunned, confused mass of feathers and fur that was the naagloshii. Fangs and claws tore, and black blood stained the ground to the sound of more horrible shrieks. The naagloshii coalesced into an eerie shape, four legs and batlike wings, with eyes and mouths everywhere. All the mouths were screaming, in half a dozen different voices, and it managed to tear its way free of the mountain lion’s grip and go flapping and tumbling awkwardly across the ground. It staggered wildly and began to leap clumsily into the air, bat wings beating. It looked like an albatross without enough headwind, and the mountain lion was hard on its heels the whole way, claws lashing out to tear and rake.
The naagloshii disappeared into the darkness, its howls drifting up in its wake as it fled. It continued to scream in pain, almost sobbing, as it rushed down the slope toward the lake. Demonreach followed its departure with a surly sense of satisfaction, and I couldn’t say that I blamed it.
The skinwalker fled the island. Its howls drifted on the night wind for a time, and then they were gone.
The mountain lion stared in the direction that the naagloshii had fled for long moments. Then he sat down, his head hanging, shivered, and became Injun Joe once more. The old man was sitting on the ground, supporting himself with both hands. He stood up slowly, and a bit stiffly, and one of his arms looked like it might be broken midway between wrist and elbow. He continued to look after his routed opponent, then snorted once and turned to walk carefully over to me.
“Wow,” I told him quietly.
He lifted his chin slightly. For a moment, pride and power shone in his dark eyes. Then he smiled tiredly at me, and was only a calm, tired-looking old man again. “You claimed this place as a sanctum?” he asked.
I nodded. “Last night.”
He looked at me, and couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether to laugh in my face or slap me upside the head. “You don’t get into trouble by halves, do you, son?”
“Apparently not,” I slurred. I spat blood from my mouth. There was a lot of that, at the moment. My face hadn’t stopped hurting just because the naagloshii was gone.
Injun Joe knelt down beside me and examined my wounds in a professional manner. “Not life-threatening,” he assured me. “We need your help.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m tapped. I can’t even walk.”
“All you need is your mind,” he said. “There are trees around the battle below. Trees that are under strain. Can you feel them?”
He’d barely said the words when I felt them through my link to the island’s spirit. There were fourteen trees, in fact, most of them old willows near the water. Their branches were bowed down, sagging beneath enormous burdens.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded distant to me, and full of detached calm.
“The island can be most swiftly rid of the beings in them,” Injun Joe said. “If it withdraws the water from the earth beneath those trees for a time.”
“So?” I said. “How am I supposed to—”
I broke off in midsentence as I felt Demonreach respond. It seemed to seize upon Injun Joe’s words, but then I understood that nothing of the sort had happened. Demonreach had understood Injun Joe only because it had understood the thoughts that those words created in my head. Communication by sound was a concept so inelegant and cumbersome and alien to the island’s spirit that it could never have truly h
appened. But my thoughts—those it could grasp.
I could all but feel the soil shifting, settling slightly, as the island withdrew the water in the ground beneath those trees. It had the predictable side effect that I realized Injun Joe had been going for. Once the ground around the trees’ roots had become arid, it began to leach water from the trees themselves, drawing it back out through the same capillary action that had brought it in. It flowed in from the outermost branches most quickly, leaving the structures behind it dry.
And brittle.
Tree branches began to break with enormous, popping cracks. A lot of branches broke, dozens, all within a few seconds, and it was like listening to packs of firecrackers going off. There was a sudden cacophony of thunder and gunfire that rose up from the docks below, and flashes of light that threw bizarre shadows against the clouds overhead.
I tried to focus on my other knowledge of the island, and I felt it—the surge in energy being released below, the increased flow of strange blood into the ground beneath the affected trees—blood that they drank thirstily, in their sudden drought conditions. The Wardens were moving forward, into the tree line. The vampires were racing ahead of them, their steps the light, swift stride of predators on the trail of wounded prey. Strange things were dying in the trees, amidst bursts of magic and flurries of gunfire.
A light rose over the island, a bright silver star that hung in the air for a long moment, like a flare.
Once he saw that, Injun Joe’s shoulders sagged a little, and he let out a slow, relieved breath. “Good. Good, that’s done for them.” He shook his head and looked at me. “You’re a mess, boy. Do you have any supplies here?”
I tried to sit up and couldn’t. “The cottage,” I blurted. “Molly. Thomas—the vampire.” I looked toward the bushes where one loyal little guardian had bought me precious seconds in the thick of the fight and started pushing my way to my feet. “Toot.”
“Easy,” Listens-to-Wind said. “Easy, easy, son. You can’t just—”
The rest of what he had to say was drowned out by a vast roaring noise, and everything, all my thoughts and fears, stopped making any noise at all inside my head. It was just . . . quiet. Gorgeously quiet. And nothing hurt.
I had time to think to myself, I could get to liking this.
Then nothing.
Chapter Forty-six
I heard voices speaking somewhere nearby. My head was killing me, and my face felt tight and swollen. I could feel warmth on my right side, and smelled the scent of burning wood. A fire popped and crackled. The ground beneath me was hard but not cold. I was lying on blankets or something.
“. . . really no point to doing anything but waiting,” Ebenezar said. “Sure, they’re under a roof, but it’s leaking. And if nothing else, morning should take care of it.”
“Ai ya,” Ancient Mai muttered. “I’m sure we could counter it easily enough.”
“Not without risk,” Ebenezar said in a reasonable tone. “Morgan isn’t going anywhere. What’s the harm in waiting for the shield to fall?”
“I do not care for this place,” Ancient Mai replied. “Its feng shui is unpleasant. And if the child was no warlock, she would have lowered the shield by now.”
“No!” came Molly’s voice. It sounded weirdly modulated, as if being filtered through fifty feet of a corrugated pipe and a kazoo. “I’m not dropping the shield until Harry says it’s okay.” After a brief pause she added, “Uh, besides. I’m not sure how.”
A voice belonging to one of the Wardens said, “Maybe we could tunnel beneath it.”
I exhaled slowly, licked my cracked lips, and said, “Don’t bother. It’s a sphere.”
“Oh!” Molly said. “Oh, thank God! Harry!”
I sat up slowly, and before I had moved more than an inch or two, Injun Joe was supporting me. “Easy, son,” he said. “Easy. You’ve lost some blood, and you got a knot on your head that would knock off a hat.”
I felt really dizzy while he said that, but I stayed up. He passed me a canteen and I drank, slowly and carefully, one swallow at a time. Then I opened my eyes and glanced around me.
We were all in the ruined cottage. I sat on the floor near the fireplace. Ebenezar sat on the hearth in front of the fireplace, his old wooden staff leaned up against one shoulder. Ancient Mai stood on the opposite side of the cottage from me, flanked by four Wardens.
Morgan lay on the bedroll where I’d left him, unconscious or asleep, and Molly sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, holding the quartz crystal in both hands. It shimmered with a calm white light that illuminated the interior of the cottage much more thoroughly than the fire did, and a perfectly circular dome of light the size of a small camping tent enclosed both Morgan and my apprentice in a bubble of defensive energy.
“Hey,” I said to Molly.
“Hey,” she said back.
“I guess it worked, huh?”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t know if it would?”
“The design was sound,” I said. “I’d just never had the chance to field-test it.”
“Oh,” Molly said. “Um. It worked.”
I grunted. Then I looked up at Ebenezar. “Sir.”
“Hoss,” he said. “Glad you could join us.”
“We waste time,” Ancient Mai said. She looked at me and said, “Tell your apprentice to drop the shield at once.”
“In a minute.”
Her eyes narrowed, and the Wardens beside her looked a little more alert.
I ignored her and asked Molly, “Where’s Thomas?”
“With his family,” said a calm voice.
I looked over my shoulder to see Lara Raith standing in the doorway, a slender shape wrapped in one of the blankets from a bunk on the Water Beetle. She looked as pale and lovely as ever, though her hair had been burned down close to her scalp. Without it to frame her face, there was a greater sense of sharp, angular gauntness to her features, and her grey eyes seemed even larger and more distinct. “Don’t worry, Dresden. Your cat’s-paw will live to be manipulated another day. My people are taking care of him.”
I tried to find something in her face that would tell me anything else about Thomas. It wasn’t there. She just watched me coolly.
“There, vampire,” Ancient Mai said politely. “You have seen him and spoken to him. What follows is Council business.”
Lara smiled faintly at Ancient Mai and turned to me. “One more thing before I go, Harry. Do you mind if I borrow the blanket?”
“What if I do?” I asked.
She let it slip off of one pale shoulder. “I’d give it back, of course.”
The image of the swollen, bruised, burned creature that had kissed Madeline Raith as it pulled out her entrails returned to my thoughts, vividly.
“Keep it,” I told her.
She smiled again, this time showing teeth, and bowed her head. Then she turned and left. I idly followed her progress down to the shore, where she walked out onto the floating dock and was gone.
I looked at Ebenezar. “What happened?”
He grunted. “Whoever came through the Nevernever opened a gate about a hundred yards back in the trees,” he said. “And he brought about a hundred big old shaggy spiders with him.”
I blinked, and frowned. “Spiders?”
Ebenezar nodded. “Not conjured forms, either. They were the real thing, from Faerie, maybe. Gave us a real hard time. Some of them started webbing the trees while the others kept us busy, trying to trap us in.”
“Didn’t want us getting behind them to whoever opened the gate,” Listens-to-Wind said.
“Didn’t want anyone to see who it was, more likely,” I said. “That was our perp. That was the killer.”
“Maybe,” Ebenezar said quietly, nodding. “As soon as those trees and the webbing came down, we started pushing the spiders back. He ran. And once he was gone, the spiders scattered, too.”
“Dammit,” I said quietly.
“That’s what all this was about,” Ebeneza
r said. “There was no informant, no testimony.”
I nodded. “I told you that to draw the real killer out. To force him to act. And he did. You saw it with your own eyes. That should be proof enough that Morgan is innocent.”
Ancient Mai shook her head. “The only thing that proves is that someone else is willing to betray the Council and has something to hide. It doesn’t mean that Morgan couldn’t have killed LaFortier. At best, it suggests that he did not act alone.”
Ebenezar gave her a steady look. Then he said, “So there is a conspiracy now—is what you’re saying? What was that you were saying earlier about simplicity?”
Mai glanced away from him, and shrugged her shoulders. “Dresden’s theory is, admittedly, a simpler and more likely explanation.” She sighed. “It is, however, insufficient to the situation.”
Ebenezar scowled. “Someone’s got to hang?”
Mai turned her eyes back to him and held steady. “That is precisely correct. It is plausible that Morgan was involved. The hard evidence universally suggests that he is guilty. And the White Council will not show weakness in the face of this act. We cannot afford to allow LaFortier’s death to pass without retribution.”
“Retribution,” Ebenezar said. “Not justice.”
“Justice is not what keeps the various powers in this world from destroying the White Council and having their way with humanity,” Ancient Mai responded. “Fear does that. Power does that. They must know that if they strike us, there will be deadly consequences. I am aware how reprehensible an act it would be to sentence an innocent man to death—and one who has repeatedly demonstrated his dedication to the well-being of the Council, to boot. But on the whole, it is less destructive and less irresponsible than allowing our enemies to perceive weakness.”
