by Jim Butcher
It took my dazzled eyes a few seconds to recover from that, and when they did, my heart almost stopped.
Standing on the ball court were twelve figures.
Twelve people in shapeless grey robes. Grey cloaks. Grey hoods.
And every single one of them held a wizard’s staff in one hand.
The Grey Council.
The Grey Council!
The nearest figure was considerably shorter than me and stout, but he stood with his feet planted as if he intended to move the world. He lifted his staff, smote it on the ground, then boomed, “Remember Archangel!” He spoke a single, resonating word as he thrust the tip of the implement at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.
The second floor of the stadium-temple where they stood . . . simply exploded. A force hit the ancient structure like an enormous bulldozer blade rushing forward at Mach 2. It smashed into the temple. Stone screamed. The Red King, the Lords of Outer Night, and several thousand tons of the temple’s structure went flying back through the air with enough violent energy to send a shock wave rebounding from the point of impact.
The massive display of force brought a second of stunned silence to the field—and I was just as slack-jawed as anyone.
Then I threw back my head and let out a primal scream of triumph and glee. The Grey Council had come.
We were not alone.
The echo of my scream seemed to be a signal, sending the rest of us back to fighting for our lives. I blew a few more vampires away from my friends, and then sensed a rush of supernatural energy coming at me. I turned and caught a tide of ruinous Red power upon my shield, and hurled a blast of flame back at a Red Court noble in massive amounts of jewelry. Others in their ranks began to open up on the newly arrived Grey Council, who responded in kind, and the air was filled with a savage crisscross of exchanged energies.
The stocky figure in grey stumped up to me and said casually, “How you doing, Hoss?”
I felt my face stretch into a fierce grin, but I answered him just as casually. “Sort of wish I’d brought a staff with me. Other than that . . . can’t complain.”
From within his hood, Ebenezar grunted. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I liked your ride. Good mileage?”
“As long as there’s some carpet to scuff your feet on,” he said, and tossed me his staff. “Here.”
I felt the energies moving through the implement at once. It was a better-made staff than mine, but Ebenezar had been the one to teach me how they were made, and both staves I had used over the years had been carved from branches of the lightning-struck oak in the front yard of his little farm in the Ozarks. I could make use of this staff almost as well as if it were my own.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Don’t you want it?”
He batted a precisely aimed thrown ax from the air with a flick of his hand and a word of power, and drawled, “I got another one.”
Ebenezar McCoy extended his left hand and spoke another word, and darkness swirled from the shadows and condensed into a staff of dark, twisted wood, unmarked by any kind of carving whatsoever.
The Blackstaff.
“Fuego!” shouted someone on the walls—and for a second I was hit with a little sting of insult. Someone was shouting “fuego” and it wasn’t me.
While I was feeling irrational pique, guns started barking, and they aimed at me first. Bullets rang sharply as they hit my armor, rebounding from it and barely leaving a mark. It was like getting hit with small hailstones: uncomfortable but not really dangerous—unless one of them managed a head shot.
Ebenezar turned toward the walls from which the soldiers were firing. Hits thumped into his robes, but seemed to do little but stir the fabric and then fall at his feet. The old man said, mostly to himself, “You took the wrong contract, boys.”
Then he swept the Blackstaff from left to right, murmured a word, and ripped the life from a hundred men.
They just . . . died.
There was absolutely nothing to mark their deaths. No sign of pain. No struggle. No convulsion of muscles. No reaction at all. One moment they were firing wildly down at us—and the next, they simply—
Dropped.
Dead.
The old man turned to the other wall, and I saw two or three of the brighter soldiers throw their guns down and run. I don’t know if they made it, but the old man swept the Blackstaff through the air again, and the gunmen on that side of the field dropped dead where they stood.
My godmother watched it happen, and bounced and clapped her hands some more, as delighted as a child at the circus.
I stared for a second, shocked. Ebenezar had just shattered the First Law of Magic: Thou shalt not kill. He had used magic to directly end the life of another human being—nearly two hundred times. I mean, yes, I had known what his office allowed him to do. . . . But there was a big difference between appreciating a fact and seeing that terrible truth in motion.
The Blackstaff itself pulsed and shimmered with shadowy power, and I got the sudden sense that the thing was alive, that it knew its purpose and wanted nothing more than to be used, as often and as spectacularly as possible.
I also saw veins of venomous black begin to ooze their way over the old man’s hand, reaching up slowly, spreading to his wrist. He grimaced and held his left forearm with his right hand for a moment, then looked over his shoulder and said, “All right!”
The farthest grey figure, tall and lean, lifted his staff. I saw light gleam off of metal at one end of the staff, and then green lightning enfolded the length of wood as he thrust the metal end into the ground. He took the staff back—but the twisting length of green lightning stayed. He drove the staff down again about six feet away, and again lightning sheathed it. Then he removed the staff, reversed his grip on it, and with a sweep of his arm drew another shaft of lightning between the two upright columns of electricity, bridging the gap.
He was opening a Way.
There was a flash of light, and the space between the bolts of lightning warped and went dark—then exploded with black figures bearing swords. For the first moment, I thought that they were wearing odd costumes, or maybe weird armor. Their faces were shaped something like a crow’s, complete with a long yellow beak. They were wearing clothes that seemed to be made from feathers—and then I got it.
They actually were beak- faced creatures, covered in soft black feathers and carrying swords, each and every one of them a Japanese-style katana. They poured out of the gate by the score, by the hundreds, and began to bound forward with unnaturally long leaps that seemed only technically different from flying. They looked deadly and beautiful, all grace, speed, and perfection of motion. The wild light of the One-woman Rave glittered off of their blades and glassy black eyes.
“The kenku owed me a favor,” Ebenezar drawled. “Seemed like a good time to call it in.”
With sharp whistles and wails of fury, the strange creatures bounded up out of the ball court and began to engage the Red Court in numbers.
It was too much to take in. Sorcery flew beside bullets on a scale larger than anything I’d ever seen. Stone weapons clashed against steel. Blood flew: the black of the vampires, the blue of the kenku, and, mostly, flashes of scarlet mortal blood. There was too much terror and incongruous beauty in it, and I think my head reacted by tuning out everything that wasn’t threatening my life, or was more than a few yards away.
“Maggie,” I said. I grabbed the old man’s shoulder. “I’ve got to get to her.”
He grimaced and nodded his head. “Where?”
“The big temple,” I said, pointing at the pyramid. “And about four hundred meters north of the temple, there’s a trailer cattle car,” I said. “It was guarded the last time I looked. There are human prisoners still in it.”
Ebenezar grunted and nodded. “Get the girl. We’ll take care of the Red Court and their Night Lords.” The old man spat on the ground, his eyes alight with excitement. “We’ll see how the slimy bas
tards like eating what they’ve been dishing out.”
I gripped his hand, hard, then put my other one on the old man’s shoulder and said, “Thank you.”
His eyes welled up for an instant, but he only snorted and squeezed back. “Get your girl, Hoss.”
The old man winked at me. I blinked a few times myself and then turned away.
Time was running out—for Maggie, and for me.
Chapter Forty-seven
“Godmother!” I shouted, turning toward the pyramid.
Lea appeared at my side, her hands now filled with emerald and amethyst light—her own deadly sorcery. “Shall we pursue the quest now?”
“Yeah. Stay close. We’ll round up the team and move.”
Molly was nearest. I went to my apprentice and shouted in her ear, “Come on! Let the birdmen take it from here! We’ve got to move.”
Molly gave me a vague nod, and finally lowered the little wands as the kenku’s charge drove into the Red Court and took the pressure from our flanks. The tips of her wands, both of them made of ivory, were cracked and chipped. Her arms hung limply and swung at her sides, and she looked even paler now than she had going in. She turned to me, gave me a quivering smile, and then suddenly sank to the ground, her eyes rolling back in her head.
I stared at her in shock for a second, and then I was on my knees next to her, my amulet glowing as I used its light to check her for injuries. In the chaos, I hadn’t seen that one of her legs, at midthigh, was a mass of blood. One of the wild shots from the security goons had hit her beneath the armored vest. She was bleeding out. She was dying.
Thomas crashed to the ground next to me. He ripped off his belt and whipped it around her leg as a tourniquet. “I’ve got this!” he said, looking up at me, his expression remote, calm. “Go, go!”
I stared at him for a second, uncertain. Molly was my apprentice, my responsibility.
He regarded me and his calm mask cracked for a second, showing me his tension, the fear he was holding in check at the scale of the conflict around us. “Harry,” he said. “I’ll guard her with my life. I swear it.”
I nodded, and then clenched a fist, looking around. That much spilled blood would start drawing vampires to the wounded girl like bees to flowers. Thomas couldn’t care for her and fight. “Mouse,” I called, “stay with them!”
The dog rushed over to Molly and literally stood over her head, his eyes and ears everywhere, a guardian determined not to fail.
Then I ran to Murphy and Sanya, who both bore small cuts and abrasions, and who looked like they were about to charge into the nearest portion of the fray. Martin tagged along with me, apparently calm, and by all appearances unaware that he was in the middle of a battle. Say what I would about Martin, his blandness, his boring demeanor, and his noncombative body language were very real armor in this situation. He simply didn’t look like an important or threatening target, and he was untouched.
I looked around them and picked up a sword that had been dropped by one of the warriors they had killed, a simple Chinese straight sword known as a jian. It was light, razor-sharp on both edges, and suited me just fine.
“We’re going to the pyramid,” I called to Murphy and Sanya. A group of thirty or forty kenku went over us, witch shadows against the rising moon, and entered the fray against the jaguar warriors who still stood between us and an exit from the ball court. “There!” I said. “Go, go, go!”
I suited action to my words and plunged toward the opening Ebenezar’s allies were cutting for us. There was a surge of magic and a flash of motion ahead of us, as another vampire noble tossed another flare of power at me. I caught a small stroke of lightning on my mentor’s staff—it was shorter, thicker, and heavier than mine—conducting the attack down my arm, across my shoulder, and out the tip of my newly acquired sword. The lightning bolt chewed a hole in the belly of the Red Court noble. He staggered as I closed on him. I spun the staff to the horizontal, and checked him in the nose as I went by, dropping him to the ground.
We went past the remains of the temple and out into the open space between the buildings. It was chaos out there. Jaguar warriors and priest types were everywhere, and most of them were armed. Mortal security folks were forming into teams and racing toward the ball court to reinforce the Red Court. I realized that at some point Murphy, her clothing shining with white light, her halo a blaze of molten gold, had begun racing along on my right side, with Sanya on my left. The brilliant light of the two Swords was a terror to the vampires and half- breeds alike, and they recoiled from that aura of power and fear—but that wasn’t the same thing as retreating. They simply fell back, while other creatures closed a large circle about us, drawing it slowly tighter as we moved toward the pyramid.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Murphy said. “They’re getting ready to rush us from all sides.”
“Always they are doing that,” Sanya said, panting, his cheerful voice going slightly annoyed. “Never is it anything new.”
They were right. I could sense the change in motion of the villains around us, how they were retreating more slowly before us, pressing in more closely behind us.
I felt my eyes drawn up to the pyramid ahead—and there, standing on the fifth level of the pyramid, looking down, was a figure in a golden mask. Evidently, one of the Lords of Outer Night had been knocked all the way over to the pyramid by Ebenezar’s entrance. And I could feel his will at work in the foes around us—not used to overcome an enemy with immobility now, but to infuse his troops with confidence and aggression.
“That guy,” I said, nodding at him. “Gold mask. We take him down and we’re through.”
Murphy scanned the pyramid until she spotted him. Then her eyes tracked down to the base of the stairs and she nodded shortly. “Right,” she said.
And she raised Fidelacchius, let out a scream that had startled a great many large men working out at her dojo, and plunged into the warriors of the Red Court like a swimmer breasting a wave.
Sanya blinked.
Holy crap, I hadn’t meant she should do that.
“Tiny,” Sanya said, letting out a belly laugh as he began to move. “But fierce!”
“You’re all insane!” I screamed, and plunged forward with them, while Martin backpedaled and tried to keep up with us while simultaneously warding off the vampires closing in from behind.
Murphy did what no mortal should have been able to do—she cut a path through a mob of warrior vampires. She went through them as if they’d been no more than a cloud of smoke. Fidelacchius blazed, and no weapon raised against the Sword of Faith, neither modern steel nor living relic, could withstand its edge.
Murphy hardly seemed to actually attack anyone. She simply moved forward, and when attacks came at her, bad things happened to whoever had attempted to strike her. Sword thrusts were slid gently aside while she continued onward, her own blade seeming to naturally, independently pass through an S-shaped slash upon the opponent’s body on the way through, wreaking terrible damage with delicate speed. Warriors who flung themselves upon her found their hands grabbing nothing, their bodies being sent tumbling through the air—and that horrible Sword of light left wounds in each and every opponent, their edges black and sizzling.
They’d come at her in twos, and once, three of the jaguar warriors managed to coordinate an attack. It didn’t do them any good. Murphy had been handling opponents who were bigger and stronger and faster than her, in situations of real danger, since she was a rookie cop. The vampires and half-breeds, swift and strong as they were, seemed no more able to beat her down than had all of those thugs and criminals. Stronger though her enemies were, the blazing light of the Sword seemed to slow them, to undermine their strength—not much, but enough to make the difference. Murphy dodged and feinted and tossed warriors into one another, using their own strength against them. The three-on-one she faced almost seemed unfair. One of the jaguar warriors, armed with an enormous club, wound up smashing his two compatriots, courtesy of the
intern Knight, only to find his club sliced into three pieces that wound up on the ground next to his own severed leg.
Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality—and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.
We hit the stairs, and resistance thinned sharply. Murphy surged ahead, and the Lord of Outer Night raised a bejeweled hand against her, his sheer will causing the air to ripple and thicken. Sanya and I hit it like a brick wall and staggered to a halt, but it seemed to slide off of Murphy, as had every other attack to come at her, her halo burning still brighter. Panicked, the enemy raised a hand and sent three shafts of sorcerous power howling at her, one right after another. Murphy’s feet, sure and swift on the stairs, carried her into a version of a boxer’s bobbing dance, and each shaft went blazing uselessly past her.
Sanya yelped and dropped, dodging the bolt that nearly clobbered him. I blocked one on my shield and took the other in the shin. My godmother’s armor protected my flesh, but I hit the stone stairs of the pyramid pretty hard.
I jerked my eyes up in time to see Murphy rush the Lord of Outer Night and speed straight past him, her sword sweeping up in a single, upward, vertical slash.
The gold mask fell from the vampire’s head—along with the front half of its skull. Silver fire burned at the revealed, twisted, lumpy lobes of the vampire’s brain, and as its blood flowed out and touched that fire, it went up in a sudden pyre of silver-white flame. The Lord of Outer Night somehow managed to scream as fire consumed it, and flung more bursts of magic blindly and in all directions for several more seconds, until it finally fell into blackened ash and ugly smears on the stone.
Only then did the barrier of its will vanish, and Sanya, Martin, and I hustled up the stairs toward the temple.
