SMALL FAVOR tdf-10

by Jim Butcher

  Marcone glanced around the featureless interior of the ruined lighthouse. “If any of them have grenades, this is going to be a relatively brief rescue operation.”

  Sanya leaned out and snapped off another pair of shots, barely getting back before return fire started chewing at the stone where he’d been. He muttered under his breath and changed magazines on his rifle.

  The enemy gunfire suddenly ceased. There was silence on the hilltop for twenty or thirty seconds. Then Nicodemus’s voice, filled with anger, came through the air. “Dresden!”

  “What?” I called back.

  “I’m going to give you one chance to survive this. Give me the girl. Give me the coins. Give me the sword. Do that, and I’ll let you walk away alive.”

  “Hah!” I said. It was possible that I didn’t feel quite as confident as I sounded. “Or maybe I’ll just leave from here.”

  “Cross into the Nevernever from where you’re standing?” Nicodemus asked. “You’d be better off asking the Russian to put a bullet through your head for you. I know what lives on the other side.”

  Given that they’d chosen this location for the greater circle precisely because it was a source of intense dark energy, I had no trouble believing that it connected to some nasty portions of the Nevernever. There was every chance that Nicodemus was not bluffing.

  “How do I know that you won’t kill me the minute you get what you want?” I called back.

  “Harry!” Michael hissed.

  I shushed him.

  “We both know what my word is worth,” Nicodemus said, his voice dry. “Really, Dresden. If we can’t trust each other, what’s the point in talking at all?”

  Heh. Gaining enough time to await the second half of what those Fireballs were supposed to accomplish, that’s what.

  The twin two-hundred-fifty-foot jets of fire had briefly blinded our enemies, true.

  But they’d done something else, too.

  Marcone tilted his head to one side for a moment and then murmured, “Does anyone else hear…strings?”

  “Ah,” I said, and pumped my fist in the air. “Ah-hahahah! Have you ever heard anything so magnificently pompous and overblown in your life?”

  Deep, ringing French horns joined the string sections, echoing over the hilltop.

  “What is that?” Sanya murmured.

  “That,” I crowed, “is Wagner, baby!”

  Never let it be said that a Chooser of the Slain can’t make an entrance.

  Miss Gard brought the reconditioned Huey up from the eastern side of the island, flying about a quarter of an inch over the treetops, blasting “The Ride of the Valkyries” from loudspeakers mounted on the chopper’s underside. Wind, sleet, and all, still she flew flawlessly through the night, having used the twin jets of the Fireball rounds, visible for miles over the pitch-black lake, to orient herself as to where to arrive. The Huey turned broadside as it rose over the hilltop, music blaring loud enough to shake snow from the treetops. The side door of the chopper was open, revealing Mister Hendricks manning a rotating-barreled minigun fixed to the deck of the helicopter-completely illegally, of course.

  But then, I suppose that’s really one major advantage to working with criminals. They just don’t care about that sort of thing.

  The barrels began to spin, and a tongue of flame licked out from the front of the gun. Snow and earth erupted into the air in a long trench in front of the cannon. I risked a peek and saw men clad in dark fatigues leaping for cover as a swath of devastation slewed back and forth across the open hilltop and pounded the mound of stones into a mound of gravel.

  “There’s our ride!” I said. “Let’s go!”

  Sanya led the way, firing off more or less random shots at anyone who wasn’t already lying flat in an effort to avoid fire from the gun on the helicopter. Some of Nicodemus’s troops were crazier than others. Several of them jumped up and tried to come after us. That minigun had been designed to shoot down airplanes. What the rounds left of human bodies was barely recognizable as such.

  There was no place for the chopper to land, but a line came down from the other side, lowered by a winch while the aircraft hovered above us. I looked up to see Luccio operating the winch, her face pale, but her eyes glittering with excitement. She was how Gard had been able to know where to look for the signal-I’d given Anastasia a couple of my hairs to use in a tracking spell, and she’d been following me ever since I left to meet Rosanna for the trade.

  The line came down with a lift harness attached to it. “Marcone,” I shouted over the sound of the rotors and the minigun-which is to say, I was more or less mouthing it exaggeratedly. “You first. That was the deal.”

  He shook his head and pointed his finger at Ivy.

  I snarled and pushed the girl into his arms, then started slapping the harness over him. He got it after a second, and in a couple more we had him secured in the harness and holding the semiconscious Ivy tight against him. I gave Luccio the thumbs-up, and Marcone and Ivy went zipping gracefully up the line to the chopper, wrapped in the white cloak, the scarlet crosses on it standing out sharply in the winter light. Luccio helped haul them in, and a second later the empty harness came down again.

  “Sanya!” I said.

  The Russian passed me the Kalashnikov and slipped into the harness, then ascended to the helicopter. Again the empty harness came down-though now there were occasional bursts of heavier rounds coming from down the slope of the hillside, as evidenced by tracer fire that would sometimes go tumbling by in the night. It would be immediately answered by the far heavier fire of the minigun, but Gard couldn’t possibly keep the chopper there for long.

  “Harry!” Michael said, offering me the harness.

  I was about to take it, but by chance I looked up and saw Gard looking down at us through the Plexiglas bubble around the pilot’s seat-looking at Michael with an absolutely unnerving intensity that I had seen on her face once before, and my heart started hammering in terror.

  The last time she’d looked like that, I’d been in an alley outside Bock Ordered Books back in Chicago, and a necromancer named Corpsetaker and a ghoul named Li Xian had been about to murder me. A few minutes later Gard had told Marcone that she had seen that it was my fate to die then and there. The only reason that I survived it was that Marcone had intervened.

  But even if I’d never seen that look on her face before, I figured that anytime a Valkyrie hovering over a battlefield suddenly gets real interested in a particular warrior, it ain’t good.

  I’d made the grasshopper a promise. If things were about to get hairy for whoever was left on the ground, it wouldn’t be Molly’s dad that had to deal with it.

  “You first,” I said.

  He started to argue.

  I shoved the harness into his chest. “Dammit, Michael!”

  He grimaced, shook his head at me, and then sheathed Amoracchius. Still holding Fidelacchius in his hand, he shrugged quickly into the harness. I gave Luccio the thumbs-up, and Michael began to rise. Gard frowned faintly, and some of my screaming tension started to ease.

  Tessa and Rosanna came out from behind veils that were as good as anything Molly could have done, and I didn’t have to be Sherlock to deduce who had done the lion’s share of the work on the greater circle that had contained the Archive. I had half a second to act, but I got tangled in the strap of Sanya’s gun, which he’d handed me so that I could defend myself in case I was suddenly attacked. Thank you, Sanya.

  Tessa, her pretty human face showing, her eyes gleaming with manic glee, swept a mantis claw at my head, and I at least managed to interpose the rifle before she ripped my head off. Only instead of smashing the gun, as I’d expected, she ripped it out of my hand, just as easily as taking candy from a baby and spun away from me.

  Then she winked at me, blew me a kiss, and opened fire on Michael with the Kalashnikov on full automatic from no more than ten feet away.

  My friend didn’t scream as bullets tore into him. He just jerked once
in a spray of scarlet and went limp.

  Fidelacchius tumbled from his fingers and fell to the ground.

  Sparks flew from the Huey as the bullets tore into it, too, and a burst of flame and smoke poured from a vent on one side of its fuselage. It dipped sharply to one side, and for a second I thought it was simply going to roll over and into the ground-but then it recovered, drunkenly, gathering momentum like a car sliding down an icy hill, still dragging my friend’s unmoving body on the trailing cable like a baited hook at the end of a fishing line, and vanished into the darkness.

  Chapter Forty-four

  E ven as some part of me noted all of that happening, the rest of me started screaming in raw, red rage, in agony, in denial.

  I was pretty sure I had worked out who had taken my blasting rod away. I was pretty sure I knew why they’d done it. I even thought that, looked at from a certain point of view, it might not have been an entirely stupid idea.

  But as of now, I officially did not care.

  I didn’t have my blasting rod with me, and I was not sure that my raw power, no matter how furious, would be enough to hurt Tessa through the defenses the Fallen gave her. I had never been able to attain the kind of precision I would need without artificial aid.

  As of right now, I officially did not care about that, either.

  I focused my rage, focused my anger, focused my hate and my denial and my pain. I blocked away everything in the entire universe but the thought of my friend’s bloody body hanging from that rope, and a spot two inches across in the center of Tessa’s chest.

  Then I drew in a breath, whirling a hand over my head and bellowed through my ragged throat, so loudly that it felt like something tore, “Fuego, pyrofuego!” I stabbed the first two fingers of my right hand forward as I did, unleashing my fury and my will. “Burn!”

  A bar of blue-white fire so dense that it was nearly a solid object lashed across the distance from me to Tessa and slammed into her like an enormous spear.

  The mantislike Denarian threw back her pretty face and screamed in agony as the shaft of fire bored cleanly through her, melting a wide hole that burned wider still before searing itself shut. She went down, howling and thrashing, burned by fire far deadlier and more destructive than any I had ever called before, with a blasting rod or without one.

  I sensed something moving toward me from the side and rolled out of the way just as one of Rosanna’s cloven hooves slashed through the air where my thigh had been an instant before. If she’d struck she would have opened the flesh to the bone. I whipped my staff at her face, forcing her to duck away, and followed with a surge of will and a shout of, “Forzare!” It wasn’t my best kinetic strike, but it was a blow heavy enough to throw her a dozen feet through the air and into a tumble over the ground.

  I seized the hilt of Fidelacchius from where the Sword had fallen. As my fingers closed around the weapon I realized several points of cold logic, as if having them explained to me by a calm, rational, wise old man who was utterly unperturbed by my rage.

  First, I realized that I was now alone on an uncharted island in the middle of Lake Michigan, with nothing but madmen and fallen angels for company.

  Second, that I still had the coins and the Sword that Nicodemus had been after-and that he was still going to be after them.

  Third, that the Denarians were sure to be really ticked off, now that I’d taken their real prize from them.

  Fourth…

  The ground shook, as if with the impact of a heavy foot.

  Fourth, that since I had confounded Summer’s attempt to track me via use of the little oak leaf pin, Eldest Brother Gruff had probably been waiting for me to use fire magic in battle-the same magic that I had entwined with the power of the Summer Lady two years ago at Arctis Tor. It was the most probable reason why Mab, the most likely suspect for messing with my head, would have taken my blasting rod and my memories of how to use fire magic in battle-to prevent me from inadvertently revealing my position to Summer every time I got into a tussle.

  Only now that I had, Eldest Gruff was probably on his way to visit.

  And fifth, and last, I realized that I had no way to get off this stupid and creepily familiar island-unless I could get down to the docks and to the boat I’d come in on.

  I still burned with the need to strike back at the people who had hurt my friend, but the fact of the matter was that I couldn’t strike back at them and survive-and if they took me down, I’d only be handing them weapons to continue the war Michael had spent a lifetime fighting to end.

  My only option was to run. Realistically, even escape wasn’t looking likely-but it was my only chance.

  So I slid the Sword back into its scabbard, oriented myself toward the run-down little town where we’d first come ashore, and ran. Fast.

  Now, I’m not as strong as those really big guys, like Michael and Sanya. I don’t do swordplay as well as folks like Nicodemus or Shiro. I don’t yet have the magical experience and know-how to outfinesse the really experienced wizards and sorcerers who have been hanging around for centuries, like the Gatekeeper or Thorned Namshiel.

  But I’ll take any of those guys in a footrace. Guaranteed. I run-and not so that I’ll be skinny and look good, either. I run so that when something that wants to kill me is chasing me, I’ll be good at running. And when you’ve got legs as long as mine, you’re skinny, and in good shape, you can really move. I hit the woods running like a deer, sticking to the path we’d broken on the way up. The snow made it easy to see the way, and though in another hour or two it would be a sheet of frozen ice, for the moment the footing was excellent.

  I was benefiting from the chaos caused by Gard’s entrance. I could hear all kinds of confusion as men shouted in the woods and tried to figure out what was going on, to get the wounded to help, and to follow what were probably conflicting orders thanks to holes ripped in their chain of command by Hendricks and his minigun. Radios clicked and voices buzzed over them, functioning unreliably, as they would in any area so rich with concentrated magical energy.

  The fact that most of the men had had their tongues removed probably didn’t help anything, either. Nick should have taken my advice and read that evil-overlord list. Seriously.

  Someone a few yards off to my right shouted something at me. It came out as totally mangled gobbledygook. I shouted back at him in similar wordless garbage, pretending that I didn’t have a tongue either, and added a rude gesture to the tirade. I don’t know if it was the perfect charade, or if it just shocked him into stunned silence, but either way it got the same effect. I went on by him without garnering any further reaction whatsoever.

  I thought I was home free as I reached the ruins of the little company town and its one main drag along the shoreline.

  And then I heard Magog’s bellow coming down the hill behind me-coming fast, too, easily making twice the speed I could manage. That was the damnedest thing about these demonic collaborator types. Even though they didn’t work out and practice, they still got to run faster than we dedicated roadsters who actually sweated and strained for our ability to haul ass. Jerks.

  It seemed clear that Magog was coming in pursuit of me, or at least that he was coming down the hill toward the dock and the boat off the island to cut off any chance of escape. I had little time to pick and choose where to go to avoid his notice, and wound up ducking into the long, heavily shadowed, cavernous length of the building that looked as if it had once been a cannery.

  The roof had fallen through in several places, and snow covered perhaps a third of the floor, providing the only thing even vaguely like light. Most of the walls were still standing, but I had grave doubts about the floor. There wasn’t space for much of a basement above the waterline, but there was plenty of room to break a leg if I fell through on a weak board. I would just have to stay close to the wall and hope for the best.

  For once, enemy manpower was working in my favor. If Nicodemus had brought only his fellow Denarians along, there would have be
en nothing but the footprints of cloven hooves and giant mantises and Grape Apes and whatnot in the snow of the island. But no, he’d had to bring along dozens and dozens of foot soldiers, too, and as a result there were regular old footprints everywhere. One more set, more or less, wasn’t going to stand out. So all I had to do was get into the building, get out of sight, and lie low until Magog had gone past.

  I had no sooner crouched down and begun my impersonation of a mouse than the ancient, half-rotted wood of the old cannery shuddered beneath me, a vibration that I felt in the soles of my feet. Then another, and another, rhythmic, like slow footsteps.

  They were followed by the sound of Magog’s approach, a heavy, leathery shuffling through the snow, accompanied by the steady heave of lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows. Then I heard Magog slide to a sudden halt in the snow and snort in surprise-then let out an enormous roar of challenge.

  And a voice, a very deep, resonant voice, said, “Be thou gone from this place, creature. My quarrel is not with thee.”

  Magog answered with a howl and spat out words in a language I did not understand.

  “Be that as it may, Elder One,” the huge voice said, gently and with respect, “I also have a duty from which I may not waver. We need not be at odds this night. Depart in peace, Elder One, with your beast of burden.”

  Magog snarled again in that foreign tongue.

  The deep voice hardened. “I seek no quarrel with thee, Fallen One. I pray thee, do not mistake peaceable intention for weakness. I do not fear thee. Begone, or I will smite thee down.”

  The gorillalike Denarian howled. I heard its claws dig and rip at the ground as it hurtled forward toward the source of the resonant voice.

  Magog, it seemed, had a really limited vocabulary when it came to repartee.

  I couldn’t see what happened next. There was a flash of gold-green light, like sunlight reflected from fresh spring grass, and a detonation in the air, a sound that was not quite a crack of thunder, not quite an explosion of fire. It wasn’t even loud so much as it was pervasive, something that I felt along the whole surface of my body as much as I did on my eardrums.